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A History of English Philosophy 



A History 

of 

English Philosophy 



By 

W. R. Sorley, Litt.D., LL.D. 

Professor in the University of Cambridge 
Fellow of the British Academy 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 
XTbe fmtcfterbocfter press 



D 



Si- 



•?» 



Copyright, 192 1 

by 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

Printed in the United States of America 



W 18 1921 



§>CU630376 




PREFACE 

THE purpose of this book is to trace the history of philo- 
sophy in Great Britain from the time when it be- 
gan to be written in the English language until the 
end of the Victorian era. 

There are two ways of writing the history of philosophy. 
One of them sets out from the standpoint of philosophy 
as conceived by the writer; the other from that of the philo- 
sophers themselves. On the former method the fundamental 
problems of philosophy will be presented at the outset, and 
each step taken towards their definition and solution will 
then be noted ; whatever is irrelevant to the main issue will 
be left out of sight, however important it may have been in 
the minds of some of the philosophers. On the latter method 
the subject will be approached as it appeared to each philo- 
sopher in turn, and the presentation of definite concepts 
and clear issues will emerge gradually as the story progresses. 
Each of these methods has its own advantages and its own 
dangers. The former concentrates upon the essential, but 
it is liable to miss historical proportion by stressing certain 
features and overlooking others. The latter keeps in close 
touch with the documents, but care is needed to prevent 
the meaning of the whole from being obscured by details. 

The accounts of English thought contained in the general 
histories of modern philosophy have, for the most part, 
followed the former method and the result has often been 
one-sided and misleading, so that even English readers have 
been led to misjudge the character of their national philo- 
sophy. The other method has been followed in the present 
treatise. All the leading philosophical writers have been 
passed under review; they have been studied in their lives 
and in their books ; and an effort has been made to seize and 

V 



vi Preface 

to express what was essential in their contribution to 
thought. 

I am fully aware of the difficulties of the plan, but I have 
done my best to surmount them. Biographical and biblio- 
graphical detail has been introduced, but it has been used to 
explain and illustrate thought. Minor writers, now seldom 
read, have been dealt with but only by giving a concise 
estimate of the contribution which each had to make to the 
subject; and they have been grouped round the leading 
representatives of a period or type of thought. These lead- 
ing writers have been made the central figures in successive 
chapters of the history. In carrying out this plan the scope 
of philosophy itself has been understood in the wider sense 
which most of the writers gave it in their own minds. The 
boundaries which separate it from theology, economics, and 
political theory have not been drawn very sharply, or, 
rather, they have been allowed to become more sharply 
marked in the course of the history just as they did in the 
minds of successive thinkers. 

By strict economy of phrase it has been found possible 
to deal with the subject within the compass of a single 
volume. The great writers have indeed not received all the 
space that might have been fitly devoted to them; but an 
effort has at least been made to preserve a due proportion. 
Yet even this statement is true only on the whole. It 
seemed more important to recognise the significance of early 
and now almost forgotten philosophers than to give a full 
account of the well-known writers who have lent distinction 
to the philosophical literature of this and the immediately 
preceding generation. In the case of these latter little more 
has been done than to convey an impression of the purpose 
and outcome of their work. Living writers have been 
rarely mentioned and then only under a sort of intellectual 
compulsion — lest their omission should convey a false im- 
pression of the state of philosophy in the closing years of 
the nineteenth century. 

The book, as it now appears, is based upon a series of 



Preface 



vn 



chapters contributed to The Cambridge History of English 
Literature. The proofs have been read by Professor Gibson, 
of the University College of North Wales, to whom I am 
indebted for a number of valuable suggestions. 

W. R. S. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface v 

CHAPTER I 
THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY 

English philosophy in the Middle Ages i 

John Scotus Erigena . . . . . . .3 

Roger Bacon ......... 5 

John Duns Scotus ........ 6 

William of Ockham ........ 7 

The Renaissance and the Scholastic revival . . . . 8 

John Case; John Sanderson ....... 8 

Everard Digby 8 

William Temple . . . . . . . . .10 

Physical Science: William Gilbert 12 

CHAPTER II 
FRANCIS BACON 

Philosophical writing in English . . . . . .14 

Bacon's life and writings . . . . . . 15 

The Renewal of the Sciences . . . . . . .21 

Bacon's leading general ideas ....... 23 

The unity of science . . . . . . . . , 23 

The practical aim of knowledge 24 

The tendencies to error in the human mind .... 24 

The doctrine of forms . . . . . . . .27 

The new method ......... 28 

Its defects .......... 30 

Political and moral theory 32 

Influence and importance of Bacon 33 

ix 



Contents 



CHAPTER III 
HERBERT OF CHERBURY AND OTHERS 



Herbert's life and writings 

The enquiry into the nature of truth 

The activity of mind 

The doctrine of common notions 
The comparative study of religions 
Platonic and Aristotelian influence 

Davies .... 

Fotherby; Hakewill 

The mysticism of Lord Brooke 
The doctrine of a law of nature . 

The casuists; Jeremy Taylor . 

Political and juridical theory: John Selden 



PACE 

35 
36 
37 
39 
40 

41 
41 
42 
42 
44 
44 
45 



CHAPTER IV 



THOMAS HOBBES 



Hobbe's life, writings, and controversies 

His scientific idea and the political occasion 

Style and thought 

His chief works .... 
The mechanical theory of reality as a whole 

The psychological theory 

The natural state of man 

The laws of nature 

Sovereignty in state and church 
Characteristics of Leviathan 
Critics of Hobbes 

Harrington and his Oceana 

Previous imaginary commonwealths: 
Bacon's New Atlantis . 

Sir Robert Filmer 

Clarendon; Bramhall 

Tenison; Eachard .... 



More's Utopia and 



47 
52 
57 
59 
61 
62 

63 
64 
65 
67 

68 

69 
7i 
72 

73 



CHAPTER V 

THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS 

Characteristics of the school -74 

Whichcote and his influence 75 



Contents xi 

PAGE 

Henry More 77 

Life and writings . • . . . . . . -77 

Influence: Plato; Descartes; occultism 78 

The limits of mechanism 78 

The nature of knowledge : innate ideas ..... 80 
The nature of spiritual substance . . . . .82 

The orders of created spirits 84 

Ethical views 85 

Ralph Cudworth .87 

The spiritual nature of reality, and the method of establishing it 

in The True Intellectual System . . . . .87 

The theory of knowledge contained in his Eternal and Immutable 

Morality ......... 92 

John Smith .......... 95 

Nathanael Culverwel 97 

Other contemporary writers 

Joseph Glanvill ..99 

Parker; Gale; Pordage . . . . . . . .100 

Richard Cumberland . . . . . .100 



CHAPTER VI 










JOHN LOCKE 


Life and writings 102 


The controversy with Stillingfleet . 








1 06 


Origin and problem of his Essay 








107 


Ideas as the object of the understanding . 








109 


Their origin in sensation or reflection 








in 


The universal element in knowledge 








113 


The idea of substance 








115 


The reference to reality in knowledge . 








116 


The certainty of knowledge 








117 


Knowledge of morality 








117 


Knowledge of real existence 








118 


Theory of the ground and limits of government 








119 


Economic views ..... 








121 


Doctrine of toleration .... 








122 


Theological views ..... 








123 


Educational doctrines .... 








124 


Critics and contemporaries of Locke . 








124 


John Sergeant 








125 


Zachary Mayne (?) 








126 


Richard Burthogge .... 








127 


John Norris 








128 



Xll 



Contents 



CHAPTER VII 
BERKELEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 



The influence of Locke 

I. Metaphysicians 

George Berkeley ..... 

Life, writings, and missionary enterprise . 

The background of his idealism 

Ideas as significant or possessing meaning 

The ideal theory of nature 

Spiritual reality and the "notion" . 
Arthur Collier and his immaterialism 

II. Deists 

Early Deism: Charles Blount 

JohnToland .... 

Anthony Collins 

Matthew Tindal 

Woolston; Annet; Chubb; Dodwell 

Bolingbroke .... 

Other theological writers: Whiston; Middleton; Warburton 

III. Moralists 

Samuel Clarke 

Other intellectualist moralists : Balguy; Wollaston 
Lord Shaftesbury . . . . 
Francis Hutcheson . . . . 
* Bernard Mandeville . . 

Joseph Butler: ethical and theological theories . 



PAGE 
130 

131 
131 
134 
I3S 
137 
139 
I4O 

141 
143 
147 
I48 
149 
150 

IS© 

152 
155 
156 
15* 
i59 
160 



CHAPTER VIII 
DAVID HUME 



His passion for literature, life and writings, and the importance of 

his first work . . . . . . . 163 

His ''experimental method of reasoning" . . . . .168 

Impressions and ideas . . . . . . . .169 

The classification of "philosophical relations" . . . .170 

Matters of fact and relations of ideas . . . . .172 

The analysis of causation 173 

The theory of belief 1 74 

His explanation of the sceptical result 176 

Theory of morality 177 

Criticism of theology 178 

Political and economic views 180 



Contents 



xm 



CHAPTER IX 
ADAM SMITH AND OTHERS 

Adam Smith 

The two periods of his literary career . 

The ethics of sympathy ; 

Social and economic philosophy .... 
The work of Sir James Steuart 
Smith's method of economic reasoning 
The natural effort of the individual and the natural 
of opulence : economic harmony . 



PAGE 

182 
185 
185 
185 
186 



progress 



188 



II. Other writers 

The problem set by Hume . . . . . . .190 

David Hartley . ........ 191 

Abraham Tucker . . . . . . . .192 

Richard Price . ........ 193 

Joseph Priestley . . . . . . . .194 

William Paley 196 



CHAPTER X 
THOMAS REID AND OTHERS 



The Reply to Hume 
Campbell; Beattie; Oswald 
Reid's criticism of the ideal theory 
His natural realism 
The doctrine of suggestion . 
The principles of Common Sense 
Dugald Stewart 
Thomas Brown 



198 
198 
199 
200 
201 
202 
202 
204 



CHAPTER XI 
BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS 



The Utilitarian school 206 

Bentham's life and writings . . . . . . .207 

The influence of James Mill 209 

Bentham's criticism of Blackstone 211 

The principle of utility . . 213 

Quantitative utilitarianism . 214 

The criterion in politics and in ethics . . . . .216 

The hedonic calculus . . . . . . . .218 

The indirect method . . . . . . . .22a 



XIV 



Contents 



The utilitarian sanctions . 
Estimate of Bentham 

His political theories and activities . 

His views on religion and education 
Godwin and Malthus 
Significance of Malthus's work . 
Utilitarian economics: David Ricardo 
The work of James Mill . 



PAGE 
221 
222 
223 
225 
225 
226 
228 
230 



I. 



II. 



III. 



IV. 



V. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE VICTORIAN ERA 

Introduction 

Period of decline in speculative interest . 

Sir William Hamilton and others 
Hamilton's reputation .... 
His new orientation of English philosophy 
His new analytic of logical forms . 

Baynes; Thomson; de Morgan; Boole 
His philosophy of perception 
His philosophy of the conditioned . 
H. L. Mansel 



John Stuart Mill and others 
Mill's intellectual development 
His estimates of Bentham and Coleridge 
Logical theory 

Predecessors: Whately; Herschel: Wheweli 

Theory of inductive inference 
Theory of the external world and of mind 
Ethical theory .... 
Social and political doctrines 

J. F. Stephen's criticism 
Economic theory 
Attitude to ultimate questions 
Reaction against Mill's views : Jevons 
Adherents of Mill: G. Grote; Bain; Robertson 
English positivism: Congreve; Bridges; Harrison 

Rational and Religious Philosophers 

John Grote 

Maurice; Newman; Martineau 



233 

234 
236 

237 
238 
238 

239 
242 

243 
245 

246 
248 

249 
250 

251 
252 

253 
253 
254 
254 
256 

257 
258 



Herbert Spencer and the Philosophy of Evolution 
Spencer's life and writings . . * . . 260 

His view of philosophy . .261 

The unknowable . . . . . . . .262 



Contents 


XV 




page 


The interpretation of life, mind, and society 


. 263 


His individualism ..... 


264 


George Henry Lewes ..... 


. 266 


Thomas Henry Huxley .... 


267 


Leslie Stephen ...... 


. 269 


The historical method in the social sciences 


270 


Maine; Cliff e Leslie; Bagehot 


270 


VI. Henry Sidgwick and Shadworth Hodgson 




Sidgwick's philosophical and ethical work 


271 


Hodgson's analysis of experience 


• 274 


VII. Idealists 




Influence of post-Kantian speculation 


• 275 


James Frederick Ferrier .... 


276 


James Hutchison Stirling .... 


• 277 


Thomas Hill Green ..... 


• 279 


William Wallace ...... 


. 281 


Edward Caird 


. 282 


Francis Herbert Bradley .... 


282 


VIII. Other Writers 




Alexander Campbell Fraser .... 


. 284 


Simon Somerville Laurie .... 


. 286 


James Ward ...... 


. 287 


Robert Adamson ...... 


. 288 


CHAPTER XIII 




RETROSPECT 




General characteristics of English philosophy 


. 290 


Comparative Chronological Table 


• 295 


Bibliography 


• 313 


Index 


. 367 



A History of 

English Philosophy 

CHAPTER I 
The Beginnings of English Philosophy 

FROM the end of the eighth century, when Alcuin of 
York was summoned to the court of Charles the Great, 
down to the middle of the fourteenth century, there 
was an almost constant succession of scholars of British 
birth among the writers who contributed to the development 
of philosophy in Europe. The most important names in the 
succession are John Scotus Erigena, John of Salisbury, Alex- 
ander of Hales, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, John Duns 
Scotus, William of Ockham, and Thomas Bradwardine. 
They wrote in Latin; and with the Latin language went 
community of culture, of topics, and of audience. All these 
they shared with an international commonwealth of scholars. 
National characteristics are never so strongly marked in 
science and philosophy as in other branches of literature, 
and their influence takes longer in making itself felt. The 
British birth or residence of a mediaeval philosopher is of little 
more than biographical interest; and the attempt to trace 
its influence on the ideas or style of his work is apt to be 
conjectural and arbitrary. His work belongs to a tradition 
only slightly affected by the differences between nation and 



2 The Beginnings 

nation ; it is a part of the history of philosophy, without being 
distinctively British. In this place, accordingly, it must 
suffice to characterise in general terms the movement of 
which the British schoolmen formed part, and some of the 
directions in which their ideas exercised an influence on later 
science and speculation. 

The philosophy of the Middle Ages was, above all things, 
an attempt at the systematisation of knowledge. The 
instrument for this synthesis was found in the logical con- 
ceptions and method of Aristotle. Its material consisted of 
the existing records of ancient philosophy and science, what 
was learned from contemporary experience, and the teach- 
ings of the church. In the heterogeneous mass of material 
thus brought together, a pre-eminent position was assigned 
to religious doctrine. The claims of theology were based 
upon revelation, interpreted by ecclesiastical authority. 
Philosophy, on the other hand, belonged to the province of 
reason, as distinct from that of faith; but it was essential 
that its results should be in harmony with theological doc- 
trine. In this way it came to be regarded as ancillary to 
theology, and this feature became characteristic of the 
scholastic method and a frequent ground of objection to it 
in its decline. Connected with it was another and a more 
favourable feature. In accepting and interpreting theo- 
logical doctrine the thought of the period recognised the 
independent value of the facts of the spiritual life. What the 
Scriptures and the fathers taught was confirmed by inner 
experience. In the laborious erudition and dialectical 
subtleties of the schoolmen there is seldom wanting a strain 
of this deeper thought, which attains its full development in 
mediaeval mysticism. Thus, in the words of a recent his- 
torian, "it dawned upon men that the spiritual world is just 
as much a reality as the material world, and that in the 
former is man's true home. The way was prepared for a 
more thorough investigation of spirit and matter than was 
possible to antiquity. Above all things, however, a sphere 
of experience was won for human life which was, in the 



John Scotus Erigena 3 

strictest sense, its own property, into which no external 
powers could penetrate. " x 

To Erigena may be traced both mediaeval mysticism and 
some anticipations of the scholastic method. He seems to 
have been born in Ireland about 810, and to have proceeded 
to France some thirty years later. Charles the Bald ap- 
pointed him to the schola palatina at Paris. He appears to 
have had no further connection with Ireland or with England, 
and to have died in France about 877. It was probably 
owing to the protection of the king that he escaped the 
graver results which usually followed a suspicion of heresy. 
His works were officially condemned by papal authority in 
1050 and 1225. Erigena was the predecessor of scholasticism 
but not himself one of the schoolmen. His anticipation of 
them consists not only in his dialectical method, but also in 
his recognition of the authority of the Bible and of the fathers 
of the church as final. But this recognition is guarded by the 
assertion that it is impossible for true authority and true 
reason really to conflict; and he deals quite freely with the 
letter of a doctrine, while he interprets its spirit in his own 
way. On the development of mystical thought he exercised 
an even greater influence. The fundamental conceptions 
and final outcome of his great work, De divisione natures, 
are essentially mystical in tone; and, by his translation of 
the pseudo-Dionysian writings, he made accessible the store- 
house from which mediaeval mystics derived many of their 
ideas. These writings are first heard of distinctly in the 
early part of the sixth century; even in that uncritical age 
they were not received without question; but they soon 
gained general acceptance as the genuine work of Dionysius 
the Areopagite who "clave unto" St. Paul after the address 
on Mars' hill, and who was supposed to have become bishop 
of Athens. The work attributed to him contains an inter- 
pretation of Christian doctrine by means of Neoplatonic 
ideas. It exercised a strong influence upon Erigena himself 
and upon subsequent mediaeval thought; and this influence 

1 H6ffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Eng. tr. f i., p. 6. 



4 The Beginnings 

was powerfully reinforced long afterwards by the study of 
Plato and the Neoplatonists at the time of the revival of 
learning. 

Erigena's work opens with a division of the whole of 
reality into four classes — that which creates and is not 
created, that which both is created and creates, that which 
is created but does not create, and that which neither creates 
nor is created. The last class is not mere non-existence. In 
general, it may be said to signify the potential as distin- 
guished from the actual; in ultimate analysis, it is the goal or 
end towards which all things strive that in it they may find 
rest. It is therefore God as final cause, just as the first class 
in the division — the uncreate creator — is God as efficient 
cause. God is thus at once the beginning and end of all 
things, from which they proceed and to which they return. 
From the uncreate creator proceed the prototypes or ideas 
which contain the immutable reasons or grounds of all that 
is to be made. The world of ideas is created and yet eternal, 
and from it follows the creation of individual things. Their 
primordial causes are contained in the divine Logos (or Son 
of God), and from these, by the power of the divine Love 
(or Holy Spirit), is produced the realm of created things that 
cannot themselves create. God created the world out of 
nothing, that is to say, out of his ineffable divine nature, 
which is incomprehensible to men and angels. And the 
process is eternal : in God vision does not precede operation. 
Nor can anything subsist outside God: "the creature sub- 
sists in God, and God is created in the creature in a wonder- 
ful and ineffable manner, manifesting himself, the invisible 
making himself visible, and the incomprehensible compre- 
hensible, and the hidden plain, and the unknown known. " x 
Thus, while God, as creator and as final cause, transcends all 
things, he is also in all things. He is their beginning, middle, 
and end. And his essence is incomprehensible; nay, "God 
himself knows not what he is, for he is not a ' what. ' ' :i Hence, 
all expressions used of God are symbolical only. Strictly 

1 De divisione natures, iii., 18, ed. Schluter (1838), p. 238. 



Roger Bacon 5 

speaking, we cannot even ascribe essence to him : he is super- 
essential; nor goodness: he is beyond good (uxepdsfaOoq). 

Erigena was more influenced by Plato than by Aristotle. 
His acquaintance with the latter's works was restricted to 
certain of the logical treatises. The greater part of the 
Aristotelian writings became known to the schoolmen at a 
later date and mainly by means of Latin translations of 
Arabic translations of a Syriac version. The new Aristo- 
telian influence began to make itself distinctly felt about 
three centuries after Erigena 's time. Alexander of Hales is 
said to have been the first schoolman who knew the whole 
philosophy of Aristotle and used it in the service of Christian 
theology. The metaphysical and physical writings of Aris- 
totle were at first viewed with suspicion by the church, but 
afterwards definitely adopted, and his authority in philoso- 
phy became an article of scholastic orthodoxy. The great 
systems of the thirteenth century — especially the most last- 
ing monument of scholastic thought, the Summa of St. 
Thomas Aquinas— are founded on his teaching 

But uniformity of opinion was not maintained com- 
pletely or for long, and three English schoolmen are to be 
reckoned among the most (if not as the most) important 
opponents of St. Thomas. These are Roger Bacon, Duns 
Scotus, and William of Ockham. 

Roger Bacon, who was born about 12 14 and died in 1294, 
was the earliest in time of the three named, and also the 
greatest and the most unfortunate. He lived and wrote 
under the shadow of an uncongenial system then at the 
height of its power. He suffered persecution and long im- 
prisonments ; his popular fame was that of an alchemist and 
a wizard; his works were allowed to lie unprinted for cen- 
turies; and only later scholars have been able to appreciate 
his significance. His learning seems to have been unique; 
he read Aristotle in Greek, and expressed unmeasured con- 
tempt for the Latin translations then in vogue; he was ac- 
quainted with the writings of the Arabian men of science, 
whose views were far in advance of all other contemporary 



6 The Beginnings 

knowledge. He does not appear himself to have made the 
original scientific discoveries with which he used to be 
credited, but he had thoroughly mastered the best of the 
science and philosophy of his day. There is, of course, much 
in his writings that may be called scholasticism, but his 
views on the method of science are markedly modern. His 
doctrine of method has been compared with that of his more 
famous namesake Francis Bacon. He was as decided as the 
latter was in rejecting all authority in matters of science ; like 
him, he took a comprehensive view of knowledge and at- 
tempted a classification of the sciences; like him, also, he 
regarded natural philosophy as the chief of the sciences. 
The differences between the two are equally remarkable and 
serve to bring out the merits of the older philosopher. He 
was a mathematician; and, indeed, he looked upon mathe- 
matical proof as the sole type of demonstration. Further, 
he saw the importance in scientific method of two steps that 
were inadequately recognised by Francis Bacon — the de- 
ductive application of elementary laws to particular cases, 
followed by the experimental verification of the results. 
11 Roger Bacon," it has been said, "has come very near, 
nearer certainly than any preceding and than any succeeding 
writer until quite recent times, to a satisfactory theory of 
scientific method. " x 

The work of Duns Scotus (1265 ?-i 308?) disturbed the 
harmony of faith and reason which had been asserted by St. 
Thomas, and which was of the essence of orthodox scholas- 
ticism. And ' ' Scotism ' ' became the rival of ' ' Thomism ' ' in 
the schools. Scotus was not himself heretical in religious 
belief, nor did he assert an antagonism between faith and 
reason ; but he was critical of all intellectual arguments in the 
domain of theology. The leading school had not attempted a 
justification by reason of such specifically Christian doctrines 
as those of the Trinity or the Incarnation (as Erigena, for 
instance, had done). These were accepted as mysteries of 

1 R. Adamson, Roger Bacon: the Philosophy of Science in the Middle Ages 
(1876), p. 35. 



William of Ockham 7 

the faith, known by revelation only. But certain doctrines — 
such as the being of God, the immortality of the soul, and the 
creation of the world out of nothing — were held to admit of 
rational proof, and thus to belong to "natural theology." 
The arguments for the latter doctrines are subjected to criti- 
cism by Scotus. He denied the validity of natural theology — 
except in so far as he recognised that a certain vision of God 
may be reached by reason, although it needs to be reinforced 
by revelation. In restricting the power of intellect, Scotus 
exalted the significance of will. Faith is a voluntary sub- 
mission to authority, and its objective ground is the uncon- 
ditional will of God. 

At the hands of Ockham (d. 1349?), who was a pupil of 
Duns Scotus, the separation between theology and philo- 
sophy, faith and reason, was made complete. He admitted 
that there are probable arguments for the existence of God, 
but maintained the general thesis that whatever transcends 
experience belongs to faith. In this way, he broke with 
Scotism as well as with Thomism on a fundamental question. 
He denied the real existence of ideas or universals and re- 
verted to the doctrine known as nominalism, of which he 
became the greatest exponent. Entities are not to be pos- 
tulated without necessity shown. The universal exists only 
as a conception in the individual mind : though it signifies, 
without change of meaning, any one of a number of things. 
The only reality is the individual, and all knowledge is de- 
rived from experience. Ockham is equally remarkable for 
his political writings, in which he defended the independent 
power of the temporal sovereign against the claims of the 
pope. His philosophical doctrines had many followers and 
opponents : but he is the last of the great scholastics, for his 
criticisms struck at the root of the scholastic presuppositions. 

For more than two centuries after Ockham 's death, only 
one writer of importance can be reckoned among English 
philosophers. That writer was John Wyclif (d. 1384), in 
whose case a period of philosophical authorship — on scholas- 
tic lines — preceded his theological and religious activity. 



8 The Beginnings 

After him comes a blank of long duration. The leaders of the 
Renaissance, both in philosophy and in science, belonged to 
the continent; and, although their ideas affected English 
scholarship and English literature, philosophical writings 
were slow to follow. And the theological controversies of 
the Reformation led to no new enquiry into the grounds 
of knowledge and belief. On the universities the teaching 
of Aristotle retained its hold, at least as regards logic, even 
after the introduction of the new " humanistic" studies. 

In the latter part of the sixteenth century Aristotelianism 
experienced an academic revival, though its supporters, in 
all cases, were suspected of papistical leanings. John Case of 
St. John's College, Oxford (B.A. 1568), gave up his fellow- 
ship on this ground (it is said), married, and was allowed by 
the university to give lectures on logic and philosophy in his 
house. In 1589 he took the M.D. degree and, in the same 
year, became a canon of Salisbury. He died in 1600. Be- 
tween 1584 and 1599 he published seven books — text -books 
of Aristotelianism — dealing with logic, ethics, politics, and 
economics. His Speculum moralium guestionum in universam 
ethicen Aristotelis (1585) was the first book printed at Oxford 
at the new press presented by the Earl of Leicester, chan- 
cellor of the university. John Sanderson, fellow of Trinity 
College, Cambridge (B.A. 1558), was appointed logic reader 
in the university in 1562, but, in the same year, was expelled 
from his fellowship for suspicious doctrine. He became a 
student at Douay in 1570, was ordained priest in the Roman 
Catholic Church, and was appointed divinity professor in 
the English college at Rheims. He died in 1602. The only 
work of his that is known is Institutionum Dialecticarum libri 
quatuor, printed at Antwerp in 1589 and at Oxford in 1594. 

About the year 1580 a vigorous controversy regarding 
the merits of the old logic and the new was carried on be- 
tween two fellows of Cambridge colleges, Everard Digby and 
William Temple. They were both younger in academic 
standing than Sanderson or Case, but they published earlier. 
Digby took his B.A. degree in the beginning of 1 571, and 



Everard Digby 9 

became fellow of St. John's early in 1573, shortly before 
Francis Bacon entered Trinity College as an undergraduate. 
He began to give public lectures on logic soon after this date. 
It is possible — we have no evidence on the point — that Bacon 
attended these lectures. If he did, they may have been the 
means of arousing his interest in the question of method, and 
they may also, at the same time, have awakened the spirit 
of criticism in him and led to that discontent with the philoso- 
phy of Aristotle which, according to his own account, he 
first acquired at Cambridge. 

Digby's career was chequered. He was suspected of 
" corrupt religion, " and he made enemies in his own society 
by his contempt for the authorities. In the end of December, 
1587, on the nominal ground of an irregularity in his pay- 
ments for commons, he was deprived of his fellowship by 
Whitaker, master of the college and a stern puritan. But 
Digby seems to have had friends in high place. He appealed 
to Burghley the chancellor and to Archbishop Whitgift. 
By their order a commission was appointed to enquire into 
the grounds of his dismissal and as a result, Digby was 
restored 28 May, 1588. But, by the end of the same year 
he seems to have been got rid of — how, we do not know. * 
Probably, the real ground of objection to him — his lukewarm 
protestantism — made it prudent for him to leave the uni- 
versity. Digby was famous in his day for his eloquence as a 
lecturer, his skill in the disputations of the schools, and his 
learning. His learning, however, is much less than appears 
from the mere array of authorities which he cites. These are 
often taken from Reuchlin's De arte cabbalistica (15 17), the 
fictitious personages of this work being sometimes referred 
to as actual authors. Digby wrote in the true scholastic 
spirit ; for him Aristotle's doctrines were authoritative, and to 
disagree with them was heresy. At the same time, his own 
Aristotelianism was coloured by a mystical theology for 

1 All the ascertainable facts were for the first time brought together by 
R. F. Scott in The Eagle (St. John's College magazine), October term, 1906. 
pp. 1-24. 



io The Beginnings 

which he was largely indebted to Reuchlin. Digby's chief 
work, Theoria analytica f viam ad monarchiam scientiarum 
demonstransy was published in 1579. This was followed next 
year by two books — a criticism of Ramus entitled De duplici 
methodo, and a reply to Temple's defence of the Ramist 
method. He was also the author of a small treatise De arte 
natandi (1587), and of an English Dissuasive from taking 
away the lyvings and goods of the Church (1589). 

William Temple passed from Eton to King's College, 
Cambridge, in 1573 ; in due course he became a fellow of the 
latter society, and was soon engaged in teaching logic. 
From about 1582 till about 1585 he was master of Lincoln 
grammar school. He then became secretary to Sir Philip 
Sidney (to whom his edition of the Dialectica of Ramus had 
been dedicated) . After the latter' s death he occupied various 
secretarial posts, and was in the service of the Earl of Essex 
when he was obliged by the favourite's fall to leave England. 
He does not seem to have returned till after the accession of 
King James. In 1609 he was made provost of Trinity Col- 
lege, Dublin, and, a few months later, master of chancery in 
Ireland. He was knighted in 1622, and died in January, 
1627. 

Temple's important philosophical writings belong to the 
early part of his career. He was a pupil of Digby at Cam- 
bridge, and wrote in terms of warm appreciation of his mas- 
ter's abilities and fame and of the new life that he had put 
into philosophical study in England. But he had himself 
found a more excellent way of reasoning in the logical method 
of Ramus, then coming to be known in this country. When 
scarcely twenty years of age, Ramus had startled the uni- 
versity of Paris by his strenuous opposition to the doctrines 
of Aristotle ; he had allied himself to the Calvinists ; and he 
ended his life as a victim of St. Bartholomew's eve. The 
protestant schools, accordingly, tended to favour his system, 
in which logic, as the art of discourse, was assimilated to 
rhetoric and given a practical character. Ascham indeed, in 
a letter of 1552 and again in his Scholemaster (1570), ex- 



William Temple u 

pressed his disapproval of it. But, as early as 1573, we hear 
of its being defended in Cambridge. 1 And in 1574, when 
Andrew Melville returned from Geneva and was appointed 
principal of the University of Glasgow, he "set him wholly 
to teach things not heard of in this country before, " 2 and the 
Dialectica of Ramus took the place of Aristotle's Organon or 
the scholastic manual elsewhere current in the universities of 
Great Britain. By his published works Temple became 
celebrated on the continent as well as at home as an exposi- 
tor and defender of Ramist doctrine; and, doubtless, it is to 
his activity that Cambridge acquired a reputation in the 
early part of the seventeenth century as the leading school 
of Ramist philosophy. 3 Temple began authorship in 1580, 
under the pseudonym of Franciscus Mildapettus Navar- 
renus, 4 with an Admonitio to Digby in defence of the single 
method of Ramus. Other controversial writings on the same 
text, against Digby and Piscator of Strasbourg, followed in 
1 58 1 and 1582. In 1584 he published an annotated edition 
of Ramus' s Dialectica , and in the same year he issued, with a 
preface by himself, a disputation against Aristotle's doctrine 
concerning the generation of simple and complex bodies, 
written by James Martin of Dunkeld, then a professor at 
Turin. These two books must have been among the first 
published by the university press, after the restoration of its 
licence by Burghley, the chancellor, in this year. s 

In clearness of thought and argumentative skill Temple 
was far superior to Digby. On the more special point in 
dispute between them — whether the method of knowledge 

1 Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, ii., p. 411. 

2 James Melvill's Diary (Edinburgh, Wodrow Society, 1842), p. 49; cf. T. 
McCrie, Life of Melville, i., p. 73; Sir A. Grant, Story of the University of Edin- 
burgh, i., p. 80. 

3 See Mullinger, op. cit., ii., p. 412. 

* " Navarrenus " proclaims the author's allegiance to Ramus, who was 
educated at the Parisian college de Navarre; "Franciscus" may indicate 
nothing more than the French origin of the doctrine; the word "Mildapettus" 
is obscure. 

s See Mullinger, op. cit., ii., pp. 297, 405. 



12 The Beginnings 

is twofold, from particulars to universals and from universals 
to particulars, or whether there is only one method of reason- 
ing, that from universals — the truth was not entirely on 
Temple's side. Nor had his method anything in common 
with the induction used in the physical sciences. But, in 
spite of its theoretical weakness, the new logic he recom- 
mended had the advantage of clearness and practicality, and 
was free from the complicated subtleties of the traditional 
systems. That Bacon was acquainted with the works of 
Digby and Temple is highly probable, though it cannot be 
conclusively established. Their influence upon him, however, 
must have consisted mainly in stimulating his interest in the 
question of method: they did not anticipate his theory of 
induction. 

While these questions occupied the schools, William 
Gilbert, fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge (1561), 
president of the Royal College of Physicians (1600), was 
engaged in the laborious and .systematic pursuit of experi- 
ments on magnetism which resulted in the publication of the 
first great English work of physical science, De Magnete, 
magneticisque corporibus (1600). Gilbert expressed himself 
as decidedly as did Bacon afterwards on the futility of ex- 
pecting to arrive at knowledge of nature by mere speculation 
or by a few vague experiments. He had indeed no theory of 
induction; but he was conscious that he was introducing a 
1 ' new style of philosophising. ' ' His work contains a series of 
carefully graduated experiments, each one of which is de- 
vised so as to answer a particular question, while the simpler 
and more obvious facts were set forth first, and their inves- 
tigation led by orderly stages to that of the more complex 
and subtle. It is unfortunate that Bacon was so little appre- 
ciative of Gilbert's book, as a careful analysis of the method 
actually employed in it might have guarded him from some 
errors. Gilbert has been called "the first real physicist and 
the first trustworthy methodical experimenter." 1 He was 
also the founder of the theory of magnetism and electricity ; 

1 K. Lasswitz, Geschichte der Atomistik (1890), i., p. 315. 



William Gilbert 13 

and he gave the latter its name, vis electrica. He explained 
the inclination of the magnetic needle by his conception of 
the earth as a magnet with two poles; he defended the 
Copernican theory; and, in his discussion of the attraction 
of bodies, there is a suggestion of the doctrine of universal 
gravitation. He had also reached a correct view of the at- 
mosphere as extending only a few miles from the surface of 
the earth, with nothing but empty space beyond. 

On an altogether different plane from Gilbert were two 
younger contemporaries of Bacon. Robert Fludd, a graduate 
of Oxford, was a man of fame in his day. He followed Para- 
celsus, defended the Rosicrucians and attacked Copernicus, 
Gilbert, Kepler, and Galileo. His works are distinguished 
by fantastic speculation rather than by scientific method. 
Nathanael Carpenter, a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, 
attacked the physical theory of Aristotle in his PMlosophia 
libera (1621). The works of William Harvey belong to the 
period following Bacon's death, although he had announced 
his discovery of the circulation of the blood in 161 6. 



CHAPTER II 
Francis Bacon 

THE English language may be said to have become for 
the first time the vehicle of philosophical literature by 
the publication of Bacon's Advancement of Learning 
in 1605. Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, which preceded it by 
eleven years, belongs to theology rather than to philosophy ; 
the nature of William Baldwin's Treatise of Moral Phyloso- 
phie, containing the Sayings of the Wyse (1547) is sufficiently 
indicated by its title; and the little-known treatise of Sir 
Richard Barckley, entitled A Discourse of the felicitie of man: 
or Ms Summum bonum (1598), consists mainly of amusing or 
improving anecdotes, and contains nothing of the nature of 
a moral philosophy. In the sixteenth century, however, a 
beginning had been made at writing works on logic in Eng- 
lish. In 1552, Thomas Wilson published The Rule of Reason, 
conteining the arte of logique. The innovation was not with- 
out danger at the time, if it be true that his publication on 
this subject in a vulgar tongue led to the author's imprison- 
ment by the Inquisition at Rome. His example was followed 
in safer circumstances by Ralph Lever, who, in his Arte of 
Reason rightly termed W iter aft, teaching a perfect way to argue 
and dispute (1573), not only wrote in English, but used words 
of English derivation in place of the traditional terminology 
— foreset and backset for "subject " and "predicate, " inholder 
and inbeer for "substance" and "accident," saywhat for 
"definition" and so on. This attempt was never taken 

14 



His Life and Writings 15 

seriously ; and a considerable time had to elapse before Eng- 
lish became the usual language for books on logic. In the 
seventeenth century, as well as in the sixteenth, the demands 
of the universities made the use of Latin almost essential for 
the purpose. 

Bacon's predecessors, whether in science or in philosophy, 
used the common language of learned men. He was the first 
to write an important treatise on science or philosophy in 
English ; and even he had no faith in the future of the Eng- 
lish language. x In the Advancement he had a special purpose 
in view : he wished to get support and co-operation in carrying 
out his plans ; and he regarded the book as only preparatory 
to a larger scheme. The works intended to form part of his 
great design for the renewal of the sciences were written in 
Latin. But the traditional commonwealth of thought was 
weakened by the forces which issued in the Renaissance ; and, 
among these forces, the increased consciousness of nation, 
ality led gradually to greater differentiation in national types 
of culture, and to the use of the national language even for 
subjects which appealed chiefly or only to the community of 
learned men. However much he may have preferred the 
Latin tongue as the vehicle of his philosophy, Bacon's own 
action made him a leader of this movement; and it so 
happened that the type of thought which he expounded had 
affinities with the practical and positive achievements of the 
English mind. In this way Bacon has come to be regarded, 
not altogether correctly, not only as the beginner of English 
philosophy, but also as representative of the special charac- 
teristics of the English philosophical genius. 

Francis Bacon was the younger of the two sons of Sir 
Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper of the great seal, by his second 
wife Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke and sister-in-law 
of Lord Burghley. He was born at York House, London, on 
22 January, 1561. In April, 1573, he was sent, along with his 
brother Anthony, to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he 
remained (except for an absence of about six months when 

1 Letters and Life, ed. Spedding, vii., p. 429. 



1 6 Francis Bacon 

the plague raged there) till Christmas, 1 575. Of his studies in 
Cambridge we know little or nothing ; and it would be easy to 
lay too great stress on the statement long afterwards made to 
Rawley, his first biographer, that, before he left the uni- 
versity, he "fell into the dislike of the philosophy, of Aris- 
totle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he 
would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitful- 
ness of the way . ' ' In 1,576 he was sent by his father to France 
with Sir Amy as Paulet, the ambassador, and in his suite he 
remained until recalled home by Sir Nicholas's sudden death 
in February, 1579. This event had an unfortunate effect 
upon his career. A sum of money which his father had set 
apart to purchase an estate for him had not been invested, 
and he inherited a fifth part of it only. He had therefore to 
look to the bar for an income and to the grudging favour of 
the Cecils for promotion. He was called to the bar in 1582, 
and entered parliament in 1584: sitting in each successive 
House of Commons until he became lord keeper. But office 
was long in coming to him. The queen had been affronted 
by an early speech of his in parliament in which he had 
criticised the proposals of the court; and the Cecils always 
proved more kin than kind. The objects which he sought 
were never unworthy nor beyond his merits ; but he sought 
them in ways not always dignified. He pleaded his cause in 
many letters to Burghley and Salisbury and Buckingham; 
and the style of his supplications can hardly be accounted 
for altogether by the epistolary manners of the period. In 
1589 Burghley got him the reversion of an office in the Star 
Chamber, worth about £1600 a year; but to this he did not 
succeed till 1608. From about 1597 he had come to be 
employed regularly as one of the queen's learned counsel. 
In 1604 he was made one of his ordinary counsel by King 
James, with a salary of £40; and Bacon reckoned this as 
his first preferment. He was made solicitor-general in 1607, 
attorney-general in 1613, privy councillor in 161 6, lord 
keeper in 161 7, lord chancellor in 161 8. He was knighted in 
1603, but, to his chagrin, along with a crowd of three hundred 



His Life and Writings 17 

others; he was created Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount 
St. Albans in 162 1. A few weeks later charges of having 
received bribes from suitors in his court were brought against 
him in the newly-summoned House of Commons ; these were 
remitted to the House of Lords for trial ; he was convicted on 
his own confession, and sentenced to deprivation of all his 
offices, to imprisonment in the tower during the king's 
pleasure, to a fine of £40,000, to exclusion from the verge of 
the court, and to incapacity from sitting in parliament. 
The imprisonment lasted a few days only ; the fine was made 
over to trustees for Bacon's benefit; the exclusion from the 
verge was soon removed; but, in spite of many entreaties, 
he was never allowed to sit in parliament again. 

In the midst of the legal and political work which crowded 
these years, Bacon never lost sight of his larger ambitions. 
He published the first edition of his Essays in 1 597, the second 
(enlarged) edition appearing in 161 2 and the third (com- 
pleted) edition in 1625. The Advancement of Learning was 
published in 1605, addressed to King James, De Sapientia 
Veterum in 1 609, Novum Organum in 1620. After his disgrace 
he lived at Gorhambury, the paternal estate to which he had 
succeeded on the death of his brother Anthony in 1601, and 
there he devoted himself to writing. The History of Henry 
VII appeared in 1622, and De Augmentis Scientiarum in 
1623; the New Atlantis was written in 1624; at his death he 
was at work on Sylva Sylvarum ; and he left behind him many 
sketches and detached portions of his great but incomplete 
design. Bacon had been married in 1606 to Alice Barnham, 
the daughter of an alderman. He died on 9 April, 1626, from 
the effects of a chill caught by moving out of his carriage in 
order to try an experiment on the antiseptic properties of 
snow. 

Bacon's plan for the renewal of the sciences was never 
fully elaborated by himself, and it has never been deliber- 
ately and systematically followed by others. In his personal 
career, too, there are some events that still remain obscure. 
But material is not lacking for forming a judgment on his 



1 8 Francis Bacon 

philosophy and on his life. We cannot expect to remove 
either from the range of controversy. But the life-long de- 
votion of Spedding may be said with confidence to have 
made one thing clear. Pope's famous epigram — "the wisest, 
brightest, meanest of mankind" — and the brilliant elabora- 
tion of the same in Macaulay's essay cannot be made to fit 
the facts. Bacon was not a monster; and his character and 
genius cannot be explained by being set in sharp antithesis. 
Life and philosophy are revelations of the same mind, and 
we must expect one to shed light on the other. It is on this 
account that it is necessary to attempt an estimate of Bacon's 
character and to touch upon the disputed events in his career, 
although the questions cannot be discussed at length, and 
little more can be done than indicate results. 

In a fragment 1 written about 1603, and apparently in- 
tended as a preface to his great work, Bacon set forth the 
ambitions which guided his life; and there is no reason for 
doubting the substantial accuracy of his account. Believing 
(he begins) that he was born for the service of mankind, he 
set himself to consider for what service nature had fitted him 
best. He saw that the good effects wrought by practical 
statesmen "extend over narrow spaces and last but for short 
times; whereas the work of the Inventor, though a thing of 
less pomp and shew, is felt everywhere and lasts for ever." 
And for this end he thought nature had destined him. "I 
found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study 
of Truth ; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to 
catch the resemblances of things (which is the chief point), 
and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish 
their subtler differences ; as being gifted by nature with desire 
to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to 
assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set 
in order ; and as being a man that neither affects what is new 
nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of impos- 

1 De inter pretatione natures prooemium, Works, iii., pp. 518-520. In this 
and other quotations from the Latin works the translations contained in Ellis 
and Spedding 's edition have been used. 



His Aims in Life 19 

ture. So I thought my nature had a kind of familiarity and 
relationship with Truth . " His first ob j ect , therefore , was the 
knowledge that would extend and establish the empire of 
man over nature. But birth and education had introduced 
him to the service of the state, and "a man's own country 
has some special claims upon him." For these reasons he 
sought civil employment; and the service of the state may 
be said to have been his second object in life. Finally, he 
adds, "I was not without hope (the condition of Religion 
being at that time not very prosperous) that if I came to hold 
office in the state, I might get something done too for the 
good of men's souls." According to Bacon's own account, 
therefore, the service of mankind to which he held himself 
born was to be carried out by devotion to three objects: the 
discovery of truth, the welfare of his country, and the re- 
form of religion. And of these three objects the first always 
held the highest place in his thoughts. * ' I confess, ' ' he wrote 
to Burghley about 1592, "that I have as vast contemplative 
ends as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all 
knowledge to be my province. " x 

This greatness of design was characteristic of the mind 
of the period as well as of Bacon personally. But it was 
accompanied by inadequate preparation in the methods and 
principles of the exact sciences as understood at the time, 
and often by an imperfect grasp of details. If the latter 
defect may be traced in his intellectual work, it is still more 
apparent in his practical activity. It is not fanciful to con- 
nect with this characteristic some of the actions for which 
he has been most censured. Throughout his career he was 
never free from financial difficulties; and, when he had ob- 
tained high preferment, he maintained a magnificent style 
of living without exercising any effective control over the 
expenditure of his household. When the charge of taking 
bribes was made against him he was much surprised, but he 
had no defence. It may be true, as he asserted, that he never 
allowed a present from a suitor to influence his decision ; nor 

1 Letters and Life, i., p. 109. 



20 Francis Bacon 

do any of his judgments appear to have been reversed on this 
ground. It may be true also that Bacon only followed the 
custom of his time : though, on this point, it is difficult to get 
evidence. But he himself saw the impropriety of a judge 
being "twice paid" — to quote the mild term of censure used 
in his New Atlantis. And he took no care to guard against 
the impropriety in his own conduct. In the main he was 
probably a just, as well as an efficient, judge. But he was 
too tenacious of his office as he had been too eager to obtain 
it; and it is hardly possible to resist the evidence for the 
conclusion that, on one occasion at least, 1 he allowed the 
court favourite Buckingham to influence his decision. In 
another matter — that of the trial of the Earl of Essex — 
Bacon's conduct has been blamed in a manner too unqualified. 
The benefits which he had received at the hands of Essex 
would not have been a sufficient reason for his standing aside 
when the need arose for his taking part in the prosecution. 
The rebellion of Essex had been a real danger to the state 
and not merely an explosion of bad temper. It was essential 
that the prosecution should not fail through the case being 
badly presented; and Bacon's intervention was not merely 
excusable: it may be argued that it was his duty to safe- 
guard the interests of the state, and to subordinate to them 
the claims of private friendship and gratitude, in spite of the 
tragedy of the personal situation. At the same time, it must 
be admitted that the record of the trial does not suggest that 
he felt the tragedy. Judging from the manner in which he 
pressed home the charge, the personal factor seems to have 
touched him but slightly. And this perhaps is characteristic. 
He was capable of high enthusiasm for ideas and for causes. 
His philosophical works are inspired by the former; and his 
writings on public affairs show a spirit of devotion to the com- 
mon weal as well as political wisdom. But, on the side of per- 
sonal sentiment, his nature seems to have been cold — not easily 
stirred to the love or hate which unite and divide mankind. 

1 See the letter of D. D. Heath (one of the editors of the Works) in Bacon's 
Letters and Life, vii., pp. 579-588. 



The Renewal of the Sciences 21 

Bacon intended that his Great Instauration or Renewal 
of the Sciences should be set forth in six parts. These he 
enumerated as follows: (1) The Division of the Sciences; 
(2) The New Organon, or Directions concerning the Inter- 
pretation of Nature; (3) The Phenomena of the Universe, or 
a Natural and Experimental History for the foundation of 
Philosophy; (4) The Ladder of the Intellect; (5) The Fore- 
runners, or Anticipations of the New Philosophy; (6) The 
New Philosophy, or Active Science. Of these parts, the last 
was to be the work of future ages; for the fourth and fifth 
only prefaces were written; the first three are represented 
by considerable works, although in none of them is the origi- 
nal design carried out with completeness. Latin was to be 
the language of them all. The Advancement of Learning, 
which, in great part, covers the ground of the first division, 
was not written as part of the plan ; but De Augmentis, which 
takes its place in the scheme, is, so far, little more than an 
extended Latin translation of the Advancement. Bacon's 
last work, Sylva Sylvarum, which belongs to the third part, 
was written in English. 

Bacon, as he said himself, took all knowledge as his 
province; his concern was not so much with particular 
branches of science as with principles, method, and system. 
For this purpose he sets out by reviewing the existing state 
of knowledge, dwelling on its defects and pointing out reme- 
dies for them. This is the burden of the first book of the 
Advancement and of De Augmentis. In the second book he 
proceeds to expound his division of the sciences. The prin- 
ciple with which he starts in his classification is psychologi- 
cal: "The parts of human learning have reference to the 
three parts of man's understanding, which is the seat of 
learning: history to his memory, poesy to his imagination, 
and philosophy to his reason." The subdivisions of these, 
however, are based on differences in the objects, not in the 
mental faculty employed. History is divided into natural 
and civil. To the latter of these, ecclesiastical and literary 
history are regarded as subordinate (although made co- 



22 Francis Bacon 

ordinate in the A dvancement) . Poetry is held to be ' ' nothing 
else but feigned history," and is subdivided into narrative, 
representative, and allusive or parabolical. But it is with 
the last of the three main divisions of learning that Bacon 
is chiefly concerned. 

"In Philosophy," he says, "the contemplations of man 
do either penetrate unto God, or are circumf erred to nature, 
or are reflected or reverted upon himself. Out of which 
several enquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine 
philosophy, Natural philosophy, and Human philosophy or 
Humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this 
triple character, of the power of God, the difference of 
nature, and the use of man." But, as the three divisions all 
spring from a common root, and certain observations and 
axioms are common to all, the receptacle for these must 
constitute "one universal science, by the name of Philosophia 
Prima, Primitive or Summary Philosophy." Among the 
three divisions of philosophy, Bacon's most important 
thoughts concern natural philosophy. One of his fundamen- 
tal ideas is expressed by its distinction into two parts — "the 
inquisition of causes, and the production of effects; Specula- 
tive, and Operative; Natural Science, and Natural Prudence." 
More subtle is the distinction of natural science into physic 
and metaphysic. The latter term is not used in its traditional 
sense, nor is it synonymous with what Bacon calls summary 
philosophy, which deals with axioms common to several 
sciences. Both physic and metaphysic deal with natural 
objects : physic with their material and efficient causes, meta- 
physic with their formal and final causes. Thus, "Physic is 
situate in a middle term or distance between Natural History 
and Metaphysic. For Natural History describeth the variety 
of things; Physic, the causes, but variable and respective 
causes; and Metaphysic, the fixed and constant causes." In 
elaborating this view, Bacon covers ground traversed again 
in the Novum Organum. 

Both for its style and for the importance of the ideas 
which it conveys, the Novum Organum ranks as Bacon's 



Novum Organum 23 

greatest work. To its composition he devoted the most 
minute care. Rawley tells us that he had seen no less than 
twelve drafts of it in Bacon's own handwriting, rewritten 
from year to year. As it was at last published its stately 
diction is a fit vehicle for the prophetic message it contains. 
The aphorisms into which the matter is thrown add impres- 
siveness to the leading ideas, without seriously interfering 
with the sequence of the argument. It is chiefly to it that we 
must go if we would understand the message and the in- 
fluence of Bacon. And this understanding will be facilitated 
if we distinguish, as he himself never did, between certain 
leading ideas which he, more than anyone else, impressed 
upon the mind of succeeding ages, and his own more special 
conception of nature and of the true method for its investi- 
gation. 

Of those leading and general ideas, two have been already 
indicated. One of these is the belief in the unity of science. 
His classification of the sciences had in view not only their 
differences but also their essential oneness. "The divisions 
of knowledge, " he says, "are like branches of a tree that meet 
in one stem (which stem grows for some distance entire and 
continuous, before it divides itself into arms and boughs)." 
They are to be accepted "rather for lines to mark or dis- 
tinguish, than sections to divide and separate. " x 

The second of these leading ideas is the practical aim of 
knowledge. This is a constantly recurring thought, and is, 
in his own mind, the most fundamental; it is the first dis- 
tinction which he draws between his own new logic and the 
old, and it was meant to characterise the new philosophy of 
which he claims to have made only the beginning. And he 
enforces it in memorable words : ' ' The matter in hand is no 
mere felicity of speculation, but the real business and for- 
tunes of the human race, and all power of operation. For 
man is but the servant and interpreter of nature: what he 
does and what he knows is only what he has observed of 
nature's order in fact or in thought; beyond this he knows 

x De Augmentis, iii., i.; iv., i.; Works, i., pp. 540, 580. 



24 Francis Bacon 

nothing and can do nothing. For the chain of causes cannot 
by any force be loosed or broken, nor can nature be com- 
manded except by being obeyed. And so those twin objects, 
human knowledge and human power, do really meet in one ; 
and it is from ignorance of causes that operation fails. "* 

Bacon's object was to establish or restore the empire of 
man over nature. This empire depends upon knowledge; 
but, in the mind of man, there are certain obstacles to know- 
ledge which predispose it to ignorance and error. The 
doctrine of the tendencies to error inherent in the human 
mind is another of his fundamental thoughts. These ten- 
dencies to error he called idola mentis — images or phantoms 
by which the mind is misled. The name is taken from Plato 
and contrasted with the Platonic "idea"; and emphasis is 
laid on the difference between the idols of the human mind, 
which are abstractions that distort and misrepresent reality, 
and the ideas of the divine mind, which are "the creator's 
own stamp upon reality, impressed and defined in matter by 
true and exquisite lines. " 2 This doctrine had long occupied 
Bacon's thought; it was stated in the Advancement, where, 
however, the last of the four classes of idols is wanting; and 
it was completely set forth for the first time in the Novum 
Organum. 

In the latter work four classes of idols are distinguished : 
idols of the tribe, idols of the cave, idols of the market-place, 
and idols of the theatre. Under these graphic titles Bacon 
works out a doctrine which shows both originality and in- 
sight. The originality is conspicuous in what he says con- 
cerning the idols of the tribe. They are deceptive tendencies 
which are inherent in the mind of man as such and belong 
to the whole human race. The understanding, he says, is 
like a false mirror that distorts and discolours the nature of 
things. Thus, it supposes more order and regularity in the 
world than it finds, as when it assigns circular motion to the 
celestial bodies; it is more moved and excited by instances 
that agree with its preconceptions than by those that differ 
1 Novum Organum, "distributio operis. " 3 Ibid., i., p. 124. 



The Idols of the Mind 25 

from them; it is unquiet, and cannot rest in a limit without 
seeking to press beyond it, or in an ultimate principle with- 
out asking for its cause; it "is no dry light, but receives an 
infusion from the will and affections"; it depends on the 
senses, and they are "dull, incompetent, and deceptive"; 
and it is "prone to abstractions and gives a substance and 
reality to things which are fleeting." The idols of the cave 
belong not to the race but to the individual. They take their 
rise in his peculiar constitution, and are modified by educa- 
tion, habit, and accident. Thus some minds are apt to 
mark differences, others resemblances, and both tend to err, 
though in opposite ways ; or again, devotion to a particular 
science or speculation may so colour a man's thoughts that 
everything is interpreted by its light. The idols of the 
market-place are those due to the use of language, and they 
are the most troublesome of all. " For men believe that their 
reason governs words ; but it is also true that words react on 
the understanding; and this it is that has rendered philo- 
sophy and the sciences sophistical and inactive." Finally, 
the idols of the theatre are due to "philosophical systems 
and the perverted rules of demonstration." In this connec- 
tion Bacon classifies "false philosophies" as sophistical, 
empirical, and superstitious. In his amplification of this 
division, his adverse judgment upon Aristotle may be dis- 
counted ; his want of appreciation of Gilbert is a more reason- 
able matter of regret ; but, at bottom, his view is sound that 
it is an error either to "fashion the world out of categories" 
or to base a system on "the narrowness and darkness of a 
few experiments." 

This criticism of the sources and kinds of error leads 
directly to an explanation of that "just and methodical 
process " of arriving at truth which Bacon calls the interpre- 
tation of nature. The process is elaborate and precisely 
defined ; and it rests on a special view of the constitution of 
nature. Neither this view nor the details of the method have 
exerted much influence upon the progress of science. But 
underlying them both was the more general idea of the im- 



26 Francis Bacon 

portance of an objective attitude to nature and of the need 
of systematic experiment; and of this general idea Bacon 
was, not indeed the originator, but the most brilliant and 
influential exponent. In the study of nature all preconcep- 
tions must be set aside ; we must be on our guard against the 
tendency to premature "anticipations" of nature: "the 
subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the 
subtlety of argument " ; men must be led back to the particu- 
lar facts of experience, and pass from them to general truths 
by gradual and unbroken ascent; "we must begin anew from 
the very foundation," for "into the kingdom of nature as 
into the kingdom of grace entrance can only be obtained sub 
persona infantis. " x 

These general but fruitful ideas do not exhaust Bacon's 
teaching. He looked forward to the speedy establishment of 
a new philosophy which should be distinguished from the 
old by the completeness of its account of reality and by the 
certainty of its results. His new method seemed to give him 
a key to the subtlety of nature ; and this method would, in- 
cidentally, tend to equalise intellectual capacities 2 so that all 
minds who followed it with care and patience would be able 
to find truth and use it for fruitful works. 

"It is a correct position, " says Bacon, "that true know- 
ledge is knowledge by causes." But the way in which he 
understands this position is significant. He adopts the 
Aristotelian division of causes into four kinds: material, 
formal, efficient, and final. Physic deals with the efficient 
and material causes; but these, apart from their relation to 
the formal cause, "are but slight and superficial, and contri- 
bute little, if anything, to true and active science." The 
enquiry into the other two belongs to that branch of natural 
philosophy which he calls metaphysic. "But of these the 
final cause rather corrupts than advances the sciences, except 
such as have to do with human action, " and "the discovery 
of the formal is dispaired of. " 3 Yet forms must be investi- 

1 N. 0., I, 68. >N.O., i., 6i. 

3 N. 0., ii., 2; cp. Works, i., p. 364; iv., p. 360. 



The Doctrine of Forms 27 

gated if nature is to be understood and controlled. Thus 
the second book of the Novum Organum opens with the 
aphorism, "Ona given body to generate and superinduce a 
new nature is the work and aim of human power. Of a given 
nature to discover the form ... is the work and aim of 
human knowledge." 

What, then, does Bacon mean by "form"? He gives 
many answers to this question, and yet the meaning is not 
altogether easy to grasp. Form is not something mental ; it 
is not an idea, nor is it a mere abstraction ; it is itself physical. 
According to Bacon, nothing really exists in nature except 
individual bodies. But the "forms of substances" are so 
complicated that their investigation, if possible at all, must 
be postponed until enquiry has been made into forms of a 
simpler kind — those of the qualities or "natures" possessed 
by substances. * The form is the condition or ground of these 
natures : its presence determines the presence of the relative 
nature ; with its absence the nature vanishes ; further, a true 
form deduces the given nature from some source of being or 
essence which is inherent in many different things. 2 Thus the 
form would seem to be expressed by a definition per genus et 
differ entiam. This explanation, however, is supplemented 
by another which identifies form with law. "When I speak 
of forms," he says, "I mean nothing more than those laws 
and determinations of absolute actuality which govern and 
constitute any simple nature, as heat, light, weight, in every 
kind of matter and subject that is susceptible of them. Thus 
the form of heat or the form of light is the same thing as the 
law of heat or the law of light. ' ' 3 And again, ' ' The form of a 
thing is the very thing itself, and the thing differs from the 
form no otherwise than as the apparent differs from the real, 
or the external from the internal, or the thing in reference to 
man from the thing in reference to the universe. " 4 

The complexity of the physical universe is due to the 

1 De Augmentis, iii., 4; Works, i., p. 365. 

J N. O., ii., 4; cp. Fowler's edition, 2d ed., pp. 54 ff. 

J N. 0., ii., 17. 4 N. 0., ii., 13. 



28 Francis Bacon 

combination, in varied ways, of a limited number of forms 
which are manifested to us in sensible qualities. If we know 
the form, we know what must be done to superinduce the 
quality upon a given body. Hence the practical character 
of Bacon's theory. Here also is brought out an idea that lies 
at the basis of his speculative doctrine — the idea that the 
forms are limited in number. They are, as it were, the alpha- 
bet of nature ; when they are understood, the whole language 
will be clear. Philosophy is not an indefinite striving after 
an ever-receding goal. Its completion may be expected in 
the near future, if only the appropriate method is followed. 

The new method leads to certainty. Bacon is almost as 
contemptuous of the old induction, which proceeded from a 
few experiments to general laws, as he is of the syllogism. 
His new induction is to advance by gradual stages of increas- 
ing generality, and it is to be based on an exhaustive collec- 
tion of instances. This collection of instances is the work of 
what Bacon called natural history, and he laboured to give 
specimens of the collections required. He always recognised 
that the collaboration of other workers was needed for their 
completion and that the work would take time. His sense 
of its magnitude seems to have deepened as it progressed; 
but he never realised that the constant process of develop- 
ment in nature made an exhaustive collection of instances a 
thing impossible. 

Given the requisite collection of instances, the inductive 
method may be employed without risk of error. For the 
form is always present where the nature (or sensible quality) 
is present, absent where it is absent and increases or de- 
creases with it. The first list of instances will consist of cases 
in which the nature is present: this is called the table of 
essence and presence. Next come the instances most akin 
to these in which nevertheless the nature is absent: this is 
called the table of absence in proximity. Thirdly, a list is 
made of instances in which the nature is found in different 
degrees, and this is the table of degrees or comparison. True 
induction begins here, and consists in a "rejection or ex- 



The Inductive Method 29 

elusion" of the several natures which do not agree in these 
respects with the nature under investigation. The non- 
essential are eliminated; and, provided our instances are 
complete and our notions of the different natures adequate, 
the elimination will proceed with mechanical precision. 
Bacon saw, however, that the way was more intricate 
than this statement suggests — especially owing to the initial 
difficulty of getting sound and true notions of simple 
natures. 1 Aids therefore must be provided. In the first 
place, he will allow the understanding to essay the 
interpretation of nature on the strength of the in- 
stances given. This "commencement of interpretation," 
which, to some extent, plays the part of hypothesis 
(otherwise absent from his method), receives the quaint 
designation of First Vintage. Other helps are then 
enumerated which Bacon proposes to treat under nine 
heads : prerogative instances ; supports of induction ; rectifi- 
cation of induction; varying the investigation according 
to the nature of the subject; prerogative natures (or what 
should be enquired first and what last) ; limits of investiga- 
tion (or a synopsis of all natures in the universe) ; applica- 
tion to practise ; preparations for investigation ; ascending and 
descending scale of axioms. Only as regards the first of these 
is the plan carried out. The remainder of the Novum Or- 
ganum is taken up with the discussion of twenty-seven kinds 
of prerogative instances; and here are to be found many of 
his most valuable suggestions, such as his discussion of soli- 
tary instances and of crucial instances. 

Although the new method was never expounded in its 
completeness, it is possible to form a judgment on its value. 
In spite of the importance and truth of the general ideas on 
which it rests, it has two serious defects, of which Bacon 
himself was not unaware. It gives no security for the valid- 
ity and accuracy of the conceptions with which the investi- 
gator works, and it requires a complete collection of 
instances, which, in the nature of things, is impossible. 

1 N. 0., ii., 19. 



30 Francis Bacon 

Coupled with these defects, and resulting from them, are 
Bacon's misunderstanding of the true nature and function 
of hypothesis, upon which all scientific advances depend, 
and his condemnation of the deductive method, which is an 
essential instrument in experimental verification. The 
method of scientific discovery and proof cannot be re- 
duced to the formulae of the second book of the Novum 
Organum. 

In spite of the width of his interests, especially in the 
domain of science, Bacon himself did not make any new 
discovery. His suggestions sometimes show insight, but also 
a certain crudity of conception which is connected with his 
inadequate general view of nature. The exposition of his 
method in the second book of the Novum Organum is illus- 
trated throughout by an investigation into the form or cause 
of heat. The result at which he permits himself to arrive as 
the "first vintage" of the enquiry exhibits this combination 
of insight and crudity. He reaches the conclusion that heat 
is a particular case of motion. The specific differences which 
distinguish it from its genus are that it is an expansive 
motion; that its direction is towards the circumference of 
the body, provided the body itself has a motion upwards; 
that it is a motion in the smaller parts of the body ; and that 
this motion is a rapid motion of fine (but not the finest) 
particles of the body. This and other investigations of his 
own were abandoned without reaching a clear result. His 
knowledge of science was also deficient, especially in the 
region of the exact sciences. He looked for an increase of 
astronomical knowledge from Galileo's telescope, but he 
appears to have been ignorant of the work of Kepler; he 
ignored Napier's invention of logarithms and Galileo's ad- 
vances in mechanical theory ; and his judgment on the Coper- 
nican theory became more adverse at the very time when 
that theory was being confirmed by Galileo and Kepler. 1 
These defects in his own scientific equipment were closely 
connected with some of the peculiarities in detail of the 
1 Compare Spedding, in Bacon's Works, iii., pp. 511, 725. 



Defects of the Method 31 

method he recommended. And the two things together 
may explain the sneer of his contemporary Harvey, that he 
wrote philosophy like a lord chancellor. Nor is it very 
difficult to understand the attitude of most subsequent men 
of science, who have honoured him as the originator of the 
experimental method but silently ignored his special precepts. 
His method was not the method of the laboratory. When 
the objects investigated can be observed only directly as 
they occur in nature, greater importance must be assigned 
to the exhaustive enumeration of facts upon which Bacon 
insisted. Darwin, for example, has recorded that, in starting 
his enquiry, he "worked on true Baconian principles, and, 
without any theory, collected facts on a wholesale scale." 1 
But Bacon did not recognise that, in investigations of this 
sort also, the enumeration must be guided by an idea or 
hypothesis, the validity of which is capable of being tested 
by the facts. He overlooked the function of the scientific 
imagination — a power with which he himself was richly 
endowed. 

According to Bacon, "human knowledge and human 
power meet in one"; and the stress which he laid upon this 
doctrine lends interest to his discussions on practical prin- 
ciples. His views on ethical and political theory, however, 
were never set forth systematically or with completeness. 
They are to be found in the second book of the Advancement 
and in the seventh and eighth books of De Augmentis, as well 
as in the Essays and in some of his occasional writings. His 
observations on private and public affairs are full of practical 
wisdom, for the most part of the kind commonly called 
"worldly." He was under no illusions about the ordinary 
motives of men, and he thought that "we are much beholden 
to Machiavel and others, that write what men do and not 
what they ought to do." Fundamental principles are dealt 
with less frequently, but they are not altogether neglected. 
A preference is expressed for the active over the contempla- 
tive life, for "men must know that in this theatre of man's 

1 Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter (1902), p. 40. 



32 Francis Bacon 

life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on." 
Aristotle's reasons for preferring the contemplative life have 
respect to private good only. But the "exemplar or plat- 
form of good" discloses a double nature: "the one, as every- 
thing is a total or substantive in itself; the other, as it is a 
part or member of a greater body; whereof the latter is in 
degree the greater and the worthier, because it tendeth to 
the conservation of a more general form (formce amplioris). " l 
In this way Bacon introduced into English ethics the dis- 
tinction, on which many controversies have turned, between 
private and public good. But the nature of this good is not 
subjected to philosophical analysis. 

A similar remark has to be made regarding Bacon's 
contributions to political theory. There is much discussion 
of matters of detail, but first principles are barely mentioned. 
The "arts of government" are said to contain three duties: 
the preservation, the happiness and prosperity, and the 
extension, of empire; but only the last is discussed. Bacon 
maintained the independence of the civil power, and, at the 
same time, defended the royal prerogative; nevertheless, 
his ideal of the state was not arbitrary government but the 
rule of law. In the Advancement he had noted that ' ' all those 
which have written of laws have written either as philo- 
sophers or as lawyers, and none as statesmen. As for the 
philosophers, they make imaginary laws for imaginary 
commonwealths ; and their discourses are as the stars, which 
give little light because they are so high. For the lawyers, 
they write according to the states where they live, what is 
received law, and not what ought to be law." And he goes 
on to say that "there are in nature certain fountains of jus- 
tice, whence all civil laws are derived but as streams." To 
this subject he returns in the eighth book of De Augmentis, 
which closes with a series of aphorisms on universal justice. 
In these aphorisms all civil authority is made to depend on 
"the sovereign power of the government, the structure of 
the constitution, and the fundamental laws"; law does not 

1 De Augmentis, vii., i; Advancement, ii.; Works, i., p. 717; iii., p. 420. 



Moral and Political Philosophy 33 

merely protect private rights ; it extends to "everything that 
regards the well-being of the state"; its end is or should be 
the happiness of the citizen; and "that law may be set 
down as good which is certain in meaning, just in pre- 
cept, convenient in execution, agreeable to the form of 
government, and productive of virtue in those that live 
under it." 

Bacon's contributions to "human philosophy" do not 
rank in importance with his reforming work in natural 
philosophy ; and his influence on the moral sciences was later 
in making itself felt, though it was similar in character to 
his influence on natural science. He often appealed for help 
in carrying out his new philosophy; but neither in natural 
science, nor in moral science, nor in philosophy generally, 
did he found a school. The philosophical writings which 
belong to the period following Bacon's death show but slight 
traces of his influence. His genius was recognised, and he 
was quoted now and again on special points ; but his leading 
doctrines were generally ignored. No new logic appeared 
on the lines described in his Novum Organum. The writers 
of logical treatises followed the traditional scholastic method 
or adopted the modifications of it introduced by Ramus. 
Even Milton's logic, which is founded on that of Ramus, 
pays no attention to the Baconian revolution. Harvey's 
unfavourable judgment on his work has been already quoted. 
Hobbes, who acted for a time as his secretary, does not seem 
to have been influenced by him in any important manner. 
And yet it is the leading thinkers — men such as Leibniz and 
Hume and Kant — who acknowledge most fully the greatness 
of Bacon. His real contribution to intellectual progress does 
not consist in scientific discoveries or in philosophical system ; 
nor does it depend on the value of all the details of his method. 
But he had the insight to discover, the varied learning to 
illustrate, and the eloquence to enforce, certain principles 
regulative of the mind's attitude to the world which, once 
grasped, became a permanent possession. He did more than 
anyone else to help to free the intellect from preconceived 



34 Francis Bacon 

notions and to direct it to the unbiased study of facts, 
whether of nature, of mind, or of society; he vindicated an 
independent position for the positive sciences; and to this, 
in the main, he owes his position in the history of modern 
thought. 



CHAPTER III 
Herbert of Cherbury and Others 

WHILE Bacon was engaged upon his plan for the re- 
newal of the sciences, his younger contemporary 
Edward Herbert was at work upon a similar 
problem. But the two men had little in common except 
their vaunted independence of tradition and their interest 
in the question of method. And their thinking diverged in 
result. Bacon is claimed as the father of empirical or real- 
istic philosophy; Herbert influenced, and to some extent 
anticipated, the characteristic doctrines of the rationalist or 
intellectualist school of thought. 

Edward Herbert, the representative of a branch of the 
noble Welsh family of that name, and elder brother of George 
Herbert the poet, was born at Eyton in Shropshire on 
3 March, 1583, matriculated at University College, Oxford, 
in 1595, married in 1599, and continued to reside at Oxford 
till about 1600, when he removed to London. He was made 
a Knight of the Bath soon after the accession of King James. 
From 1608 to 16 1 8 he spent most of his time on the continent, 
as a soldier of fortune: seeking occasionally the society of 
scholars, in the intervals of the campaign, the chase, or the 
duel. In 1619 he was appointed ambassador at Paris; after 
his recall in 1624 King James rewarded him with an Irish 
peerage. He was created an English peer as Baron Herbert 
of Cherbury in 1629. The civil war found him unprepared 
for decision ; but he ultimately saved his property by siding 

35 



36 Herbert of Cherbury and Others 

with the parliament. He died in London on 20 August, 
1648. 

His works were historical, literary, and philosophical. 
His account of the Duke of Buckingham's expedition to 
Rhe and his history of Henry VIII were written with a view 
to royal favour. The latter was published in 1 649; a Latin 
version of the former appeared in 1658, the English original 
not till i860. His literary works — poems and autobiography 
— are of much higher merit. The former were published by 
his son in 1665; the latter was first printed by Horace Wal- 
pole in 1764. His philosophical works give him a distinct 
and interesting place in the history of thought. His greatest 
work, De Veritate, was, he tells us, begun in England and 
"formed there in all its principal parts." Hugo Grotius, to 
whom he submitted the manuscript, advised its publication; 
but it was not till this advice had been sanctioned (as he 
thought) by a sign from heaven that he had the work printed 
(Paris, 1624). To the third edition (London, 1645) he added 
a short treatise De Causis Errorum, a dissertation entitled 
Religio Laid, and an Appendix ad Sacer dotes. In 1663 
appeared his De Religione Gentilium — a treatise on what is 
now called comparative religion. A popular account of his 
views on religion was published in 1768 under the title A 
Dialogue between a Tutor and his Pupil, by Edward Lord 
Herbert of Chirbury; and, although the external evidence is 
incomplete, it may have been from his pen. 

Herbert does not stand in the front rank of speculative 
thinkers ; but his claims as a philosopher are worthy of note. 
Like Bacon he was occupied with the question of method; 
and his enquiry went deeper, though it was less effective 
upon philosophical opinion. Bacon, it may be said, investi- 
gated the criteria and canons of evidence, whereas Herbert 
sought to determine the nature and standard of truth. 
Descartes soon afterwards referred to the question and put it 
aside, saying of Herbert 1 : "he examines what truth is; for 
myself, I have never doubted about it, as it seems to me to 
1 In a letter of 16 Oct., 1639; CEuvres, ed. Adam and Tannery, ii., pp. 576 £. 



The Activity of Mind 37 

be a notion so transcendentally clear that it is impossible to 
ignore it." The problem which Herbert put before himself 
concerned the conditions of knowledge ; and it has a bearing 
upon later thought, though it arises out of traditional views. 
In the end of the following century Kant said that his own 
new point of view was due to discarding the belief that "all 
our cognitions must conform to objects," which had been 
"hitherto assumed." This was, indeed, the prevailing doc- 
trine. Perception was held to be a ' ' passio mentis ' ' produced 
by the activity of the object which impressed its image (or, 
to use the term which Descartes and Locke made familiar, 
an idea) upon the mind. This view was rejected by Herbert 
as decidedly as by Kant, though he did not anticipate the 
Kantian revolution by assuming that "objects must conform 
to our cognition." 

The distinction between mind and body had not yet been 
sharpened and turned into antagonism by the Cartesian 
dualism. Man is a complex of mind and body, and, accord- 
ing to Herbert, all that is passive in him is body 1 — though 
body itself is not purely passive. Mind, however, is never 
passive. It acts but is not acted upon. 2 Things do not act 
upon it but are put within the sphere of its operation. 3 
Nevertheless, it requires an occasion, or the presence of 
objects, to awaken its activity, even in its highest opera- 
tions. 4 Herbert's expressions are not quite consistent, for 
this awakening of mental activity is itself an effect upon 
mind; but perhaps he might have defended his doctrine by 
appealing to the harmony which exists between faculty and 
object. For in this lies his fundamental conception — differ- 
ent alike from the traditional view that cognition must con- 
form to objects, and from the Kantian view that objects 
must conform to cognition. The mental faculty supplies a 
form analogous to the object as it exists 5 ; the object, again, 
neither undergoes an alteration of nature nor produces one, 
but only enters, as it were, into the faculty's range of view. 

1 De Veritate, 3d ed., p. 72. * Ibid., p. 91. 

* Ibid., p. 95. « Ibid., p. 27. s Ibid., p. 95. 



38 Herbert of Cher bury and Others 

The whole process is only intelligible on the supposition of a 
harmony between the world and man's mind. In this har- 
mony the human body, fashioned out of the material of the 
external world and containing the sense-apparatus which 
lead to the "inner court " of consciousness, forms the bond of 
union. 

Herbert's doctrine of the nature of truth rests on this con- 
ception of harmony. "Truth," he says, "is a certain har- 
mony between objects and their analogous faculties." 1 
Four kinds or degrees of truth are distinguished by him: 
truth of the thing ; truth of appearance ; truth of concept ; and 
truth of intellect. These seem to be arranged in an ascending 
scale. The first does not exclude the others ; the last includes 
all the preceding, being the "conformity" of the several 
"conformities" they involve. The conditions of truth are 
also made to explain the possibility of error, for the causes of 
error lie in the intermediate stages between the thing and 
the intellect. The root of all error is in confusion— in the 
inappropriate connection of faculty and object — and it is 
for the intellect to expose the inappropriate connection and 
so to dissipate the error. 

The doctrine arrived at is summed up in seven propo- 
sitions 2 ; and all these hinge upon the postulate that mind 
corresponds with things not only in their general nature but 
in all their differences of kind, generic and specific. Every 
object is cognate to some mental power or faculty, and to 
every difference in the object there corresponds a different 
faculty. Herbert attempts no account of nature, and his 
psychology is only introduced in the interests of his doctrine 
of truth ; but it is clear that there cannot be fewer faculties 
than there are differences of things. A faculty is defined as 
any internal force which unfolds a different mode of appre- 
hension (sensus) to a different object 3 ; and faculties are 
spoken of as radii animcB, which perceive objects, or rather 
the images given out by objects, in accordance with mutual 
analogy. These images may be conveyed by the same sense- 

1 De Veritate, p. 68. J Ibid., pp. 8-12. * Ibid., p. 30. 



The Pervasiveness of Intellect 39 

apparatus and yet be apprehended by different faculties, as 
is the case with figure and motion. " Hence countless facul- 
ties ; but their very multiplicity suggests that Herbert cannot 
have attributed to them the same degree of independence as 
did the ' ' faculty-psychologists ' ' of a recent generation. They 
may be said to be simply modes of mental operation; and 
mind operates differently as different kinds of objects are 
brought before it, showing always an aspect of its cognitive 
power analogous to the object. 

Reflecting upon the various modes of mental activity, 
we may arrange these faculties into four classes: natural 
instinct, internal sense, external sense, and discourse or 
reasoning. These are not separate powers; and, although 
Herbert may have sometimes spoken of them as such, 
another doctrine may be found in his writings. According 
to this doctrine all mental faculty is regarded as informed in 
less or greater measure by the intellect, which is itself a 
manifestation in man of the universal divine providence. 
"Our mind, " he says, "is the highest image and type of the 
divinity, and hence whatever is true or good in us exists in 
supreme degree in God. Following out this opinion, we 
believe that the divine image has also communicated itself 
to the body. But, as in the propagation of light there is 
growing loss of distinctness as it gets farther from its source, 
so that divine image, which shines clearly in our living and 
free unity, first communicates itself to natural instinct or 
the common reason of its providence, then extends to the 
numberless internal and external faculties (analogous to 
particular objects), closes into shade and body, and some- 
times seems as it were to retreat into matter itself. " 2 

The name "natural instinct" is badly chosen; but it is 
not difficult to see what Herbert means by it. In particular, 
it is the home of those " common notions " (as he calls them) 
which may be said to underlie all experience and to belong 
to the nature of intelligence itself. Some of these common 
notions are formed without any assistance from discourse 

1 De Veritate, p. 78. J Ibid., p. 70. 



40 Herbert of Cherbuiy and Others 

or the ratiocinative faculty ; others are only perfected by the 
aid of discourse. The former class is distinguished by certain 
tests or marks. Some of these tests are logical (such as in- 
dependence, certainty, and necessity) ; others are psychologi- 
cal (such as priority in time and universality). But it is the 
last-named mark or "universal consent" that is made by 
him " the highest rule of natural instinct, " x and "the highest 
criterion of truth." 3 

This appeal to universal consent makes Herbert a pre- 
cursor of the philosophy of Common Sense, and lays him 
open to the criticism urged by Locke that there are no truths 
which can satisfy the test, there being nothing so certain or 
so generally known that it has not been ignored or denied by 
some. Herbert made little if any use of the tests by which 
he might have shown that certain common notions are pre- 
supposed in the constitution of experience, and thus failed 
to carry out the theory of knowledge of which at times he 
had a clear view. 

The common notions are practical as well as theoretical — 
yield the first principles of morals as well as those of science. 
But he attempted no complete account of them and limited 
his investigation to the common notions of religion. To this 
portion of his work his direct influence as a thinker is chiefly 
due, for it determined the scope and character of the English 
Deistical movement. The common notions of religion are, 
he holds, the following: (i) that there is a supreme Deity; 
(2) that this Deity ought to be worshipped ; (3) that virtue 
combined with piety is the chief part of divine worship ; (4) 
that men should repent of their sins and turn from them ; (5) 
that reward and punishment follow from the goodness and 
justice of God, both in this life and after it. These five 
articles contain the whole doctrine of the true catholic 
church, that is to say, of the religion of reason. They also 
formed the primitive religion before the people "gave ear to 
the covetous and crafty sacerdotal order. ' ' What is contrary 
to the " five points " is contrary to reason and therefore false ; 

x De Veritate, p. 60. * Ibid., p. 39. 



Sir John Da vies 41 

what is beyond reason but not contrary to it may be re- 
vealed : but the record of a revelation is not itself revelation 
but tradition ; and the truth of a tradition depends upon the 
narrator and can never be more than probable. 

A separate work — De Religione Gentilium — was devoted 
to the verification of these results on the field of what is now 
called comparative religion. In respect of this work the 
claim may be justly made for Herbert that he was one of the 
first — if not the first — to make a systematic effort after a 
comparative study of religions. But he had no idea of the 
historical development of belief, and he looked upon all 
actual religions — in so far as they went beyond his five 
articles — as simply corruptions of the pure and primitive 
rational worship. 

Religion is as powerful a stimulus to philosophical 
thought as science is, and it is apt to lead more directly to 
the study of ultimate problems. It was the chief interest 
in the speculative writings of Herbert of Cherbury, and the 
same interest is even more directly obvious in other writings. 
In 1599 Sir John Davies had published his philosophical 
poem Nosce Teipsutn, in which a view of the nature of the 
soul and arguments for its immortality are "expounded in 
two elegies." Utilising Platonic, as well as Aristotelian, 
ideas, the author worked out a spiritual philosophy in which 
the soul is regarded as akin to the universal order, 

For Nature in man's heart her lawes doth pen : 
Prescribing truth to wit, and good to will, 
Which doe accuse, or else excuse all men, 
For euery thought or practise, good or ill : 

and therefore the soul can find no true satisfaction in earthly 
things : 

Wit, seeking Truth, from cause to cause ascends, 
And never rests till it the first attaine : 
Will, seeking Good, finds many middle ends, 
But neuer stayes, till it the last doe gaine. 



42 Herbert of Cherbury and Others 

The same influence led to work of a philosophical kind 
among theologians, usually conveyed in a scholastic manner. 
In his Atheomastix (1622), Martin Fotherby, bishop of Salis- 
bury, relied chiefly on St. Thomas Aquinas in his demon- 
stration of the being of God, and maintained that there 
is a " natural prenotion" that there is a God. The work of 
George Hakewill, archdeacon of Surrey, entitled An Apologie 
or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God (1627), 
touches on philosophy without being genuinely philosophical 
in character. Bacon is referred to for his " noble and worthy 
endeavour ... so to mix and temper practice and specula- 
tion together, that they may march hand in hand" ; but his 
new method is not spoken of, though both Ramus and Lully 
are referred to in the section on advances in logic. Nor does 
the discussion on truth contain any observations beyond the 
ordinary commonplaces: it does not show any knowledge 
of Herbert of Cherbury' s enquiry, and can hardly have 
suggested ideas to Lord Brooke. The real importance of 
the book lies in the fact that the author's eyes are turned to 
the future, not to the past. It is an elaborate argument 
against the view that the history of the world is a record of 
deterioration from an earlier golden age. As described on 
the title-page, it is "an examination and censure of the 
common error touching nature's perpetual and universal 
decay." 

Much more important is the work of Lord Brooke, in 
whom the puritan temper was combined with the mystic. 
Robert Greville, cousin and adopted son of Fulke Greville, 
first Lord Brooke, was born in 1608, and entered parliament 
in 1628. In the civil war he acted as a general of the par- 
liamentary army, gained the victory of Kineton in 1642, 
took Stratford-on-Avon in February, 1643, and was killed 
at the attack on Lichfield a few weeks later. He was an 
ardent puritan, and in 1641 wrote A Discourse opening the 
nature of that Episcopacie which is exercised in England, 
aimed at the political power of the bishops. In the same year 
was published his philosophical work The Nature of Truth, 



Lord Brooke 43 

In this work he refuses to distinguish between philosophy 
and theology. "What is true philosophy but divinity?" he 
asks, "and if it be not true, it is not philosophy." He ap- 
peals to reason and reflection alone for an answer to his 
question; but his method differs from that of Herbert of 
Cherbury in dealing with the same subject : it is less logical 
and thorough, and more mystical. He had "dived deep," 
his editor says, ' ' into prophetic mysteries. ' ' He was also well 
read in speculative, especially Neoplatonic, writings. 

The revival of Platonism had already affected English 
literature; its influence may be seen in the works of Sir 
Thomas More and in Davies's Nosce Teipsum, and it had 
coloured the Aristotelianism of Everard Digby ; but Brooke 
was the first Englishman to present in an original treatise 
the fundamental ideas which, later in the same century, bore 
riper fruit in the works of the Cambridge Platonists. The 
two doctrines of the unity of reality and the emanation of all 
things from God rule his thought ; and he thinks that difficul- 
ties about truth are solved when we see that the under- 
standing, the soul, light, and truth are all one: all being is 
but one emanation from above, diversified only in our appre- 
hension. Faith and reason differ in degree only, not in nature ; 
knowledge and affection are but several shapes under which 
truth is present to our view: "what good we know, we are; 
our act of understanding being an act of union. ' ' The author 
goes on to explain that all the diversities of things — even 
space and time themselves — are without reality and are only 
appearances to our apprehension. The whole physical 
world, accordingly, is merely phenomenal; in it there is no 
true being, nor are there any true causes, though it is allow- 
able, "when you see some things precede others," to "call 
the one a cause the other an effect." In these expressions 
have been found anticipations of the idealism of Berkeley 
and of Hume's theory of causation. In presenting his doc- 
trine Brooke wrate like a seer, rather than as a logician who 
has tested its consistency and adequacy. But he had the 
seer's vision, and. the vision gave him courage, "for if we 



44 Herbert of Cherbury and Others 

knew this truth," he says, "that all things are one, how 
cheerfully, with what modest courage, should we undertake 
any action, reincounter any occurrence, knowing that that 
distinction of misery and happiness, which now so perplexeth 
us, has no being except in the brain.' ' 

The doctrine of a law of nature was commonly relied upon 
by the more philosophical writers who dealt with the details 
of moral duty. Among the moralists of this class may be 
reckoned William Perkins, author of Armilla aurea (1590) 
(Englished as A Golden Chaine, 1600), and of The Whole 
Treatise of the Cases of Conscience (1608) ; William Ames, a 
Calvinistic theologian, who wrote De Conscientia et ejus jure 
vel casibus (1630) ; and Robert Sanderson, bishop of Lincoln, 
who wrote not only a Latin compendium of logic (Oxford, 
161 5), but many works besides, including De juramenti 
promissorii obligatione (1647), and De obligatione conscientiae. 
The former of these is said to have been translated into Eng- 
lish by King Charles during his imprisonment. Joseph Hall, 
bishop of Norwich and satirist, was the author of Characters 
of Vertues and Vices (1608) and of Decisions of diverse Prac- 
tical Cases of Conscience (1649). But the greatest work of 
the kind in English, and perhaps the greatest treatise on 
casuistry ever written by a protestant theologian, is the 
Ductor Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor (1660). Publishing 
shortly after the Restoration, and dedicating his book to the 
king, the author rejoices that "now our duty stands on the 
sunny side." He professes to open out a way untrodden 
before. He will not collect individual cases of conscience, 
for they are infinite; but he seeks to provide a "general 
instrument of moral theology, by the rules and measures of 
which the guides of souls may determine the particulars that 
shall be brought before them." The work opens with a 
description of conscience as a reflection of the divine law — 
"the brightness and splendour of the eternal light, a spotless 
mirror of the divine majesty, and the image of the goodness 
of God." It proceeds to describe the characteristics of in- 
dividual consciences when brought into contact with the 



Jeremy Taylor 45 

problems of conduct; it passes on to an enquiry into the 
nature of law in general, and of particular laws, divine and 
human; and it closes with a discussion of the nature and 
causes of good and evil. The whole forms a comprehensive 
treatise on Christian ethics, based undoubtedly on traditional 
scholastic doctrines, but holding firmly to the inwardness of 
morality and illustrated by an extraordinary wealth of 
concrete examples. 

It is only to a small extent that the writings of John Sel- 
den, historian, jurist, and political writer, fall within the 
scope of this work. His treatise De Dis Syris (161 7), his 
Historie of Tithes (161 8), and most of his other works lie 
beyond its range. But, in his treatment of the law of nature, 
he entered upon topics which are common to him and the 
philosophers. In his Mare Clausum (1635) he maintained 
two propositions against Grotius: first, that, by the law of 
nature, the sea is not common to all men but is capable of 
private sovereignty or proprietorship, equally with the earth ; 
and, secondly, that the king of Great Britain is sovereign of 
the surrounding seas, as an individual and perpetual appan- 
age of the British empire. As was usual in his day and for 
long afterwards, he identified the law of nature with inter- 
national law. This identification is seen in the title of his work 
De jure naturali et gentium juxta disciplinam Hebraeorum 
( 1 640) . But here he has in view not the law or custom which 
regulates the relation of state to state, but the natural or 
moral law which is common to all men independently of 
positive enactment divine or human. With the wealth of 
learning in which he was without a rival in his day, he traces 
the opinions of the Jews on the subject of moral obligation, 
and, at the same time, brings out his own view of the law of 
nature. He holds, with most jurists, that law requires an 
authority to prescribe it and that therefore reason cannot 
be the source of law. At the same time, he allows that God 
has imprinted certain moral rules in the minds of all men. 

Speculation on these and kindred topics was soon to enter 
upon a new stage under the impulse derived from the original 



46 Herbert of Cherbury and Others 

mind of Hobbes. Before his work is dealt with, two other 
writers may be mentioned. Sir Kenelm Digby, remarkable 
in many departments of life and letters, was also a philo- 
sopher, and wrote a treatise on the immortality of the soul 
(1644). In 1655 Thomas Stanley, well known as a classical 
scholar, published the first History of Philosophy written 
in the English language. 



CHAPTER IV 
Thomas Hobbes 

THOMAS HOBBES was born at Westport, adjoining 
Malmesbury in Wiltshire, on 5 April, 1588. His 
father, the vicar of the parish (so Aubrey 1 tells us), 
"was one of the ignorant Sir Johns of Queen Elizabeth's 
time, could only read the prayers of the church and the 
homilies, and valued not learning, as not knowing the sweet- 
ness of it." His mother came of yeoman stock. Of her we 
know nothing beyond the story of her dread of the Spanish 
Armada : the air was full of rumours of its approach ; and her 
terror led to the premature birth of her second son. As he 
put it long afterwards, "she brought forth twins — myself 
and fear." The expression is significant, used, as it was, 
when he could look back on more than eighty years of life, 
begun amidst the terror of invasion and afterwards harassed 
by civil war and unstable government. To seek peace and 
follow it became, in his view, the fundamental law of nature ; 
and the philosopher was himself (to use his own phrase) a 
"man of feminine courage." "The first of all that fled" at 
the threat of civil war, he was afterwards quick to return 
when the French government seemed likely to offer less pro- 
tection than the Commonwealth. But the importance of 
these events for his life and doctrine has sometimes been 
exaggerated. He had passed his fiftieth year before the 

1 John Aubrey (1626-97), Letters written by eminent persons . . . and Lives 
of eminent men, 18 13; Brief Lives, ed. by A. Clark, 1898. 

47 



48 Thomas Hobbes 

threat of danger touched him and, by that time, he had 
already completed a work which contains in outline the essen- 
tial features of his philosophy. Throughout the long years of 
preparation which fitted him to take his place among the 
greatest of modern philosophers, Hobbes led a sheltered and 
leisured life, and it is not to be supposed that dreams of the 
Armada disturbed his quiet. His education was provided 
for by an uncle, a solid tradesman and alderman of Malmes- 
bury. He was already a good Latin and Greek scholar when, 
not yet fifteen, he was sent to Magdalen Hall, Oxford. The 
studies of the university were then at a low ebb ; and no sub- 
sequent reforms affected his low opinion of them. Yet he 
seems to have learned the logic and physics of Aristotle, 
as they were then taught, though he preferred to "lie gaping 
on maps" at the stationers' shops. On leaving Oxford, in 
1608, he became companion to the eldest son of Lord Caven- 
dish of Hardwicke (afterwards created Earl of Devonshire), 
and his connection with the Cavendish family lasted (al- 
though not without interruptions) till his death. Through 
this connection he gained security and leisure for his own 
work, opportunities of travel, and ready admission to the 
society of statesmen and scholars. 

Three times in his life Hobbes travelled on the continent 
with a pupil. His first journey was begun in 1610, and in it 
he visited France, Germany, and Italy, learning the French 
and Italian languages, and gaining experience, but not yet 
conscious of his life's work. On his return (the date is un- 
certain), he settled down with his young lord at Hard wick 
and in London. His secretarial duties were light, and he set 
himself to become a scholar; with the society and books at 
his command, he did not "need the university" (he said); 
he read the historians and poets, both Greek and Latin, and 
taught himself a clear and accurate Latin style. To these 
studies his first published work bears witness — an English 
translation of Thucydides, sent to press in 1628, but com- 
pleted some years earlier. To this period, also, belongs his 
acquaintance with Bacon, Herbert of Cherbury, Ben Jonson, 



Relations with Bacon 49 

and other leading men of the time. Of his association with 
Bacon (probably sometime in the years between 1621 and 
1626) we know little beyond what Aubrey tells us — that he 
translated some of Bacon's essays into Latin,that on occasion 
he would attend with ink and paper and set down Bacon's 
thoughts when he contemplated and dictated "in his deli- 
cious walks at Gorhambury, " and that "his lordship would 
often say that he better liked Mr. Hobbes's taking his 
thoughts, than any of the others, because he understood 
what he wrote." There is no evidence, however, that their 
discourse turned on strictly philosophical questions; nor 
does it appear that philosophical interest had, as yet, become 
dominant in Hobbes's mind ; certainly, he was never a pupil of 
Bacon ; and it is an error to attempt, as has sometimes been 
done, 1 to affiliate his philosophy to the Baconian. They 
agreed in their opposition to medievalism, and both at- 
tempted to elaborate a comprehensive scheme; the vague 
term "empirical" may also be applied to both; but Hobbes 
set small store by experiment, 2 and his system differed fun- 
damentally from Bacon's in method, temper, and scope. 
One important point only was common to both — their accept- 
ance of the mechanical theory; and for this theory there is 
ample evidence, external as well as internal, that Hobbes was 
indebted not to Bacon but directly to Galileo. 

Hobbes's pupil and friend died in 1628, two years after 
the death of the first earl ; his son and successor was a boy of 
eleven; his widow did not need the services of a secretary; 
and, for a time, there was no place in the household for 
Hobbes. In 1629 he left for the continent again with a new 
pupil, returning from this second journey in 1 631 to take 
charge of the young earl's education. Little is known of his 
travels, but this period of his life is remarkable for two 
things — his introduction to the study of geometry, and his 
first effort towards a philosophy. As regards the former, 

1 E. g., by Kuno Fischer, cp. Ges. d. neuern Phil., Jubilaumsausg., x., p. 

355- 

2 English Works, ed. Molesworth, vol. iv., pp. 436-7; vol. vii., p. 117. 

4 



5° Thomas Hobbes 

there is no reason for doubting Aubrey's story, which throws 
light both on his early education and on the controversies of 
his later years. "He was forty years old before he looked on 
geometry, which happened accidentally; being in a gentle- 
man's library in . . . Euclid's Elements lay open, and it 
was the 47 prop. lib. 1. So he reads the proposition, 'By 
G — ,' says he, 'this is impossible!' So he reads the demon- 
stration of it, which referred him back to another, which also 
he read, et sic deinceps, that at last he was demonstratively 
convinced of that truth. This made him in love with geome- 
try." About this time also, or soon afterwards, his philo- 
sophical views began to take shape. Among his manuscripts 
there is a Short Tract on First Principles, 1 which has been 
conjectured to belong to the year 1630 and cannot have been 
much later. It shows the author so much impressed by his 
reading of Euclid as to adopt the geometrical form (soon 
afterwards used by Descartes) for the expression of his argu- 
ment. It shows further that he had already fixed on the con- 
ception of motion as fundamental for the explanation of 
things, but also that he had not yet relinquished the scholas- 
tic doctrine of species in explaining action and perception. 

When Hobbes made his third visit to the continent, 
which lasted from 1634 to 1637 and on which he was accom- 
panied by the young Earl of Devonshire, he is found taking 
his place among philosophers. At Paris he was an intimate 
of Mersenne, who was the centre of a scientific circle that 
included Descartes and Gassendi; and at Florence he held 
discourse with Galileo. There is an earlier record, in January, 
1633, of Hobbes searching the shops in London for a copy of 
Galileo's Dialogue, 2 and searching vainly, as the small supply 
had been sold out. And now he seems to have arrived at the 
view that not only is motion the fundamental conception 
for explaining the physical world, but that man and society 
also can be explained on the same mechanical theory. After 
his return to England he wrote, with a view to publication, a 

1 See Hobbes's Elements of Law, ed. Tdnnies, 1889, pp. 193-210. 

2 Dialogo dei due massimi sistemi del mondo, 1632. 



The Elements of Law 51 

sketch of his new theory, to which he gave the title Elements 
of Law natural and politic. The physical doctrine of which 
he had taken firm hold lies at the basis of this work, but it 
deals in detail only with the mind of man and the principles 
of social order. The introduction to his Thucydides had 
already shown his interest in the latter subject, and the side 
of politics to which he leaned himself, by the emphasis he 
laid on the historian's preference for the monarchical form of 
government. In his dedication of The Elements (dated 
9 May, 1640), Hobbes says that his object is to reduce the 
doctrine of justice and policy in general to "the rules and 
infallibility of reason" after the fashion of mathematics. 
This volume is the "little treatise in English" to which he 
afterwards referred as written in the days of the Short Par- 
liament. He says that "Of this treatise, though not printed, 
many gentlemen had copies, which occasioned much talk of 
the author: and had not his majesty dissolved the parlia- 
ment, it had brought him into danger of his life." The 
treatise was never published by Hobbes, nor did it appear as 
a connected whole until 1889, although in 1650, probably 
with his consent, its first thirteen chapters were issued with 
the title Human Nature, and the remainder of the volume as 
a separate work De Cor pore Politico. In November, 1640, 
when the Long Parliament began to show signs of activity, 
Hobbes fled to France, where he remained for the next eleven 
years. 

These years were fruitful in many ways. From the 
beginning he was in constant intercourse with Mersenne and 
the brilliant group of men of science who frequented his 
monastery. Soon too he was followed to Paris by other 
English emigrants of the royalist party, among whom was 
the Marquis of Newcastle, a member of the Cavendish family, 
to whom the unpublished Elements of Law had been dedi- 
cated. By his influence Hobbes was appointed to teach 
mathematics to Charles, Prince of Wales, who arrived in 
Paris in 1646. His position in the exiled court was ultimately 
rendered impossible by the suspicions of its clerical members ; 



52 Thomas Hobbes 

but Charles's friendship was of importance to him in later 
years, after the restoration of the monarchy. It was New- 
castle's desire to hear both sides of a question that led, during 
his residence in France, to discussion, and afterwards to a 
somewhat acrimonius controversy on the problem of free-will, 
with John Bramhall, bishop of Deny. Of greater interest is 
another literary correspondence which followed close upon 
his arrival in Paris. Mersenne was then collecting the 
opinions of scholars on the forthcoming treatise by Des- 
cartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, and in January, 
1 64 1, Hobbes's objections were ready and forwarded to his 
great contemporary in Holland. These, with the replies of 
Descartes, afterwards appeared as the third set of Objectiones 
when the treatise was published. Further communications 
followed on the Dioptrique which had appeared along with 
the famous Discours de la methode in 1637. Descartes did not 
discover the identity of his two critics; but he did not ap- 
prove of either; and indeed, as regards the subject-matter of 
the Meditationes , the thinking of the two philosophers moved 
in such different worlds that mutual understanding was 
almost impossible. To Descartes, mind was the primal 
certainty and independent of material reality. Hobbes, on 
the other hand, had already fixed on motion as the funda- 
mental fact, and his originality consisted in his attempt to 
use it for the explanation not of nature only, but also of mind 
and society. Two or three years after his correspondence 
with Descartes, Hobbes contributed a summary of his views 
on physics and a Tractatus Opticus to works published by 
Mersenne. 

At latest by the beginning of his residence in Paris in 
1640 Hobbes had matured the plan for his own philosophical 
work. It was to consist of three treatises, dealing respec- 
tively with matter or body, with human nature, and with 
society. It was his intention, he says, to have dealt with 
these subjects in this order, but his country "was boiling hot 
with questions concerning the rights of dominion, and the 
obedience due from subjects, the true forerunners of an 



De Cioe and Leviathan 53 

approaching war, " and this cause, as he said, ''ripened and 
plucked from me this third part" of the system — the book 
De Cive, published at Paris in 1642. Hobbes's first political 
publication was thus directly occasioned by the troubles of 
the time. Only a small edition seems to have been printed. 
Gassendi spoke of the difficulty of procuring a copy and 
expressed his satisfaction when the author allowed a new and 
enlarged edition to be printed at the Elzevir press in Amster- 
dam in 1647. In this edition the description of the book as 
the third part of a philosophical system was removed, at the 
publisher's request, from the title-page, and a new preface 
was added in which the author explained his plan. The 
book was a tract for the times as well as a philosophical 
treatise; but it was not till four years later, when stable 
government seemed to have been re-established by the 
Commonwealth, that he had it published in London, in an 
English version from his own hand, as Philosophical Rudi- 
ments concerning Government and Society. The same year, 
1 65 1, saw the publication, also in London, of his greatest 
work, Leviathan, and his own return to England, which now 
promised a safer shelter to the philosopher than France, 
where he feared the clergy and was no longer in favour with 
the remnant of the exiled English court. In the case of De 
Cive, and still more in that of Leviathan, the political situation 
led to greater fulness of detail and also to a more fervid 
manner of utterance than had been shown in his earliest 
treatise. In particular, the danger arising from the claim to 
independence or to direction on the part of the ecclesiastical 
power gave occasion for a much more comprehensive treat- 
ment of the subject of religion. As early as 1641 he had 
expressed the opinion that the dispute "between the spiritual 
and civil power has of late, more than any other thing in the 
world, been the cause of civil wars in all places of Christen- 
dom, " and had urged that "all church government depend 
on the state and authority of the kingdom, without which 
there can be no unity in the church. ' ' This was not palatable 
doctrine to any of the sects, and there was much more to 



54 Thomas Hobbes 

cause them alarm in the theological discussions contained in 
his Leviathan. But, after the Restoration, in a dedication 
to the king, he was able to claim that all had been " pro- 
pounded with submission to those that have the power 
ecclesiastical, " holding that he had not given any ground of 
offence "unless it be for making the authority of the church 
[depend] wholly upon the regal power; which I hope your 
majesty will think is neither atheism nor heresy." 

The last twenty-eight years of Hobbes' s long life were 
spent in England ; and there he soon returned to the house 
of his old pupil the Earl of Devonshire, who had preceded 
him in submitting to the Commonwealth and like him wel- 
comed the king on his return. For a year or two after his 
home-coming Hobbes resided in London, busied with the 
completion of his philosophical system, the long-delayed first 
part of which, De Cor pore, appeared in 1655, and the second 
part, De Homine, in 1656. The latter work contains little or 
nothing of importance that Hobbes had not said already; 
but the former deals with the logical, mathematical, and 
physical principles which were to serve as foundation for the 
imposing structure he had built. A new world had been 
revealed to him, many years ago, when, at the age of forty, 
he had first chanced upon Euclid's Elements. He had de- 
signed that his own philosophy should imitate the certainty 
of mathematics. In the dedication to his first treatise he had 
called mathematics the one branch of learning that is "free 
from controversies and dispute." Yet, strangely enough, 
when we remember how provocative of controversy were all 
his leading views, it was disputes about the most certain of 
all subjects that filled and harassed the last five and twenty 
years of his life. 

The author of Leviathan could hardly have expected to 
escape controversy, and he did not do anything to avoid it. 
The views of human nature set forth in the book became for 
generations the favourite battle-ground for contending philo- 
sophies; its political theory was not fitted to please either 
party; and, on its religious doctrine, the clergy would have 



Controversial Writings 55 

something to say when they came to their own again. His 
dispute with Bramhall on the question of free-will began in 
his Paris days and has been already recorded. But it was 
not allowed to be forgotten. In 1654 the tract Of Liberty 
and Necessity, which he had written eight years before in 
reply to the bishop's arguments, was published by some 
person unnamed into whose hands it had fallen. Not sus- 
pecting Hobbes's innocence in the matter of the publication, 
Bramhall replied with some heat on the personal question 
and much fulness on the matter in hand in the following year ; 
and this led to Hobbes's elaborate defence in The Questions 
concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, published in 1656. 
By this time, however, the storm of controversy had 
already broken out in another quarter. Hobbes remembered 
Oxford as it was in his student days and made little allow- 
ance for altered manners and the reform of studies. In the 
fourth part of Leviathan, which is devoted to "the kingdom 
of darkness, " he had taken occasion to pronounce judgment 
on the universities: they are a bulwark of papal power; their 
philosophy is but "Aristotelity"; for them, "till very late 
times, " geometry was but an "art diabolical." But Oxford 
had undergone a change since the days when Hobbes could 
afford to despise its learning. In particular, the Savilian 
professorships, founded in the interval, were held by two men 
of eminence, Seth Ward and John Wallis — the latter a mathe- 
matician of the first rank. They were acknowledged masters 
of a science in which Hobbes seems to have been only a 
brilliant and capricious amateur — the greatest of circle- 
squarers. The dispute began, mildly enough, in a vindica- 
tion of the university by Ward against another critic, Hobbes 
being dealt with in an appendix. This was in 1654; Dut next 
year Hobbes's own mathematical discoveries were published 
with much parade in De Corpore. The opportunity was then 
seized by Wallis, who, in a few months, was ready with a 
reply in which the pretended demonstrations were torn to 
shreds. From this time onwards the war of pamphlets raged 
unremittingly. Hobbes maintained his opinions with a 



56 Thomas Hobbes 

tenacity which would have been wholly admirable if they had 
been better grounded ; and he was bold enough to carry the 
war into the enemy's camp, though with unfortunate results, 
and to engage other adversaries, such as Robert Boyle, but 
with no better success. It is unnecessary to follow the con- 
troversy in detail, 1 but incidentally it produced one docu- 
ment of great personal interest — a defence of his own reputa- 
tion in the form of a letter to Wallis written in 1662. 

In addition to these and connected controversies, more 
serious trouble threatened the philosopher's later years. 
After the Restoration, he was well received by the king, who 
took pleasure in his conversation. But he had an enemy in 
the clergy; his opinions were notorious; it was easy to con- 
nect them with the moral licence shown in high places ; and, 
after the great Plague and the great Fire, at a time when 
recent disaster made men's consciences sensitive and their 
desires welcome a scape-goat, Hobbes was in no little danger. 
A bill aimed at blasphemous literature actually passed the 
Commons in January, 1667, and Leviathan was one of two 
books mentioned in it. The bill never passed both houses; 
but Hobbes was seriously frightened; he is said to have be- 
come more regular at church and communion ; he studied the 
law of heresy also, and wrote a short treatise on the subject, 
proving that there was no court by which he could be judged. 
But he was not permitted to excite the public conscience by 
further publications on matters of religion. A Latin transla- 
tion of Leviathan (containing a new appendix bringing its 
theology into line with the Nicene creed) was issued at 
Amsterdam in 1668. Other works, however, dating from the 
same year, were kept back — the tract on Heresy, the answer 
to Bramhall's attack on Leviathan, and Behemoth: the His- 
tory of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England. About the 
same time was written his Dialogue between a Philosopher and 

1 A lucid and admirable sketch of its successive stages is given in Croom 
Robertson's monograph on Hobbes (1886). It should be added, however, that 
Tonnies {Hobbes, 1896, p. 55, 2d ed., p. 230) thinks that Robertson has dealt 
too hardly with Hobbes in his account of the controversy. 



Latest Writings 57 

a Student of the Common Laws of England. His Historia 
Ecclesiastica, in elegiac verse, dates from about his eightieth 
year. When he was eighty-four he wrote his autobiography 
in Latin verse. Neither age nor controversy seemed to tire 
him. Although controversy had the last word — he published 
Decameron Physiologicum at the age of ninety — he turned 
in old age for solace and employment to the literature which 
had been his first inspiration. In 1673 he published a trans- 
lation in rhymed quatrains of four books of the Odyssey; and 
he had completed both Iliad and Odyssey when, in 1675, he 
left London for the last time. Thereafter he lived with the 
Cavendish family at one of their seats in Derbyshire. He 
died at Hardwick on 4 December, 1679. 

Hobbes is one of a succession of English writers who are 
as remarkable for their style as for the originality of their 
thought. Bacon, Hobbes, Berkeley, and Hume — to mention 
only the greatest names — must be counted amongst the 
masters of language, wherever language is looked upon as 
conveying a meaning. And, in each case, the style has an 
individual quality which suits the thought and the time. 
Bacon's displays a wealth of imagery and allusion significant 
of the new worlds which man's mind was to enter into and to 
conquer ; it has the glamour not of enchantment but of dis- 
covery ; greater precision and restraint of imagery would not 
have befitted the pioneer of so vast an adventure. The 
musical eloquence of Berkeley is the utterance of a soul rapt 
in one clear vision and able to read the language of God in the 
form and events of the world. Hume writes with the un- 
impassioned lucidity of the observer, intent on technical 
perfection in the way of conveying his meaning, but with no 
illusions as to its importance. Hobbes differs from all three 
and, in his own way, is supreme. There is no excess of 
imagery or allusion, though both are at hand when wanted. 
There is epigram; but epigram is not multiplied for its own 
sake. There is satire; but it is always kept in restraint. 
His work is never embellished with ornament: every orna- 
ment belongs to the texture of the argument. There is never 



58 Thomas Hobbes 

a word too many, and the right word is always chosen. His 
materials are of the simplest; and they have been formed 
into a living whole, guided by a great thought and fired by 
the passion for -a great cause. 

Aubrey tells us something of his method of work. "He 
had read much, if one considers his long life, but his con- 
templation was much more than his reading. He was wont 
to say, that if he had read as much as other men, he should 
have continued still as ignorant as other men. The manner 
of writing [Leviathan] was thus. He walked much and con- 
templated, and he had in the head of his cane a pen and ink- 
horn, carried always a note-book in his pocket, and as soon 
as a thought darted, he presently entered it into his book, or 
otherwise might have lost it." This careful forethought for 
idea and phrase was always controlled by the dominant pur- 
pose, which was to convince by demonstration. How the 
method worked may be seen from a characteristic passage. 
Speaking of undesigned trains of thought, he says: "And 
yet in this wild ranging of the mind, a man may oft-times 
perceive the way of it, and the dependance of one thought 
upon another. For in a discourse of our present civil war, 
what could seem more impertinent, than to ask (as one did) 
what was the value of a Roman penny? Yet the coherence 
to me was manifest enough. For the thought of the war 
introduced the thought of the delivering up the king to his 
enemies; the thought of that brought in the thought of the 
delivering up of Christ; and that again the thought of the 
30 pence, which was the price of that treason; and thence 
easily followed that malicious question; and all this in a 
moment of time ; for thought is quick. ' ' Here the illustration 
strikes home; the sarcasm hits the party he hated most; and 
the last four words clinch the whole and bring back the dis- 
course to the matter in hand. Attention is arrested, not 
diverted, so that the single paragraph in which these sen- 
tences occur may be taken as having started the line of 
thought which issued in the theory of association, for a long 
time dominant in English psychology. 



Underlying Ideas 59 

To understand the underlying ideas of Hobbes's philo- 
sophy, portions of his Latin work De Corpore must be kept in 
view ; but his lasting fame as a writer rests upon three books : 
Elements of Law, Philosophical Rudiments concerning Gov- 
ernment and Society (the English version of De Cive), and 
Leviathan. The first of these books is a sketch, in clear out- 
line and drawn with unfaltering hand, of the bold and origi- 
nal theory which he afterwards worked out and applied but 
never altered in substance. It contains less illustration and 
less epigram than the later works, but it yields to neither of 
them in lucidity or in confidence. The circumstances which 
led to its issue in two fragments, arbitrarily sundered from 
one another, have hindered the general recognition of its 
greatness. Nor did it appear at all till De Cive was well 
known and Leviathan ready for press. The latter works are 
less severe in style: they have a glow from the ''bright live 
coal" which (we are told) seemed to shine from Hobbes's eye 
when he spoke. De Cive is restricted to the political theory ; 
but his whole view of human life and the social order is com- 
prehended in Leviathan. 

The title-page of Leviathan depicts its purpose. The 
upper half of the page has, in the foreground, a walled town 
with tall church spires ; behind, the country rises towards a 
hill out of which emerges the figure of a man from the waist 
upwards; a crown is on his head; his right hand wields a 
sword, his left grasps a crosier; his coat of mail consists of a 
multitude of human figures, with their faces turned to him, 
as in supplication. On the lower half of the page, on either 
side the title, are represented a castle and a church, a coronet 
and a mitre, a cannon and lightning, implements of war and 
weapons of argument, a battle-field and a dispute in the 
schools. Over all runs the legend Non est potestas super 
terram quae comparetur ei. This is the design "of that great 
Leviathan, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that 
mortal God, " whose generation and power Hobbes sets out 
to describe. 

The figure of the leviathan dominates the whole book, 



60 Thomas Hobbes 

and Hobbes argues over and over again that there is no 
alternative between absolute rule and social anarchy. Its 
lurid picture of the state of nature, contrasted with the peace 
and order instituted by sovereign power, undoubtedly re- 
flects the troubles and emotions of the time ; but it is no mere 
seventeenth century version of In Darkest England and the 
Way Out. Far less is Hobbes's whole philosophy to be put 
down to the fear of civil tumult and the desire to think out a 
theory of government adequate to its restraint. Leviathan 
is a work of great and enduring importance just because it is 
not a mere political pamphlet. It owes life and colour to the 
time at which it was written; but another force also contri- 
buted to its making — a conception of larger scope, which 
gives it the unity of a philosophical masterpiece. 

This underlying conception and all the author's most 
striking ideas are to be found in the treatise completed in 
1640 — when political troubles were obviously at hand but as 
yet no personal danger threatened. In logic and.lucidity this 
earlier treatise is not surpassed by the later work, though it 
fails to give the same constant impression of reality. It is a 
text-book such as philosophers have sometimes written for 
statesmen, to instruct them in the principles of their craft ; 
and it did not entirely escape the usual fate of such efforts. 
Before Hobbes set about writing it the fundamental idea of a 
philosophy had taken root in his mind ; and this idea he owed 
to the new mechanical theory, and in particular to Galileo's 
teaching. Motion, he came to think, was the one reality; 
all other things are but " fancies, the offspring of our brains." 
He did not now, or indeed afterwards, work out a mechanical 
theory of the physical universe, as Descartes, for instance, 
was doing. But he had a bolder — if an impossible — project. 
Descartes restricted mechanism to the extended world, 
maintained the independence of mental existence, and held 
the latter to be of all things most certain. Hobbes did not 
thus limit the applications of his new idea. He thought he 
could pass from external motions to "the internal motions 
of men, " and thence to sovereignty and justice. This is his 



The Mechanical Theory 61 

own account, and it agrees with what we know otherwise. 
Neither the mechanical theory, nor the psychology, is an 
afterthought introduced to bolster up a foregone political 
conclusion. They have their roots too deep in Hobbes's 
mind. It is true that the desired transitions could not logic- 
ally be made, and Hobbes found out the difficulty later. But, 
when civil disturbance forced his hand and led to the elabora- 
tion of his ethical and political doctrine, this doctrine was 
found to be in harmony with the idea from which his view of 
the universe started. The external and mechanical charac- 
ter of the political theory is an indication of its unreality, but 
it bears witness also to the unity of conception that domi- 
nates the whole philosophy. 

All things, according to Hobbes, "have but one uni- 
versal cause, which is motion." But for him, as for other 
writers of his day, "motion" is not a merely abstract con- 
ception; it includes movement of masses or of particles. 
From geometry, which treats of abstract motion, he thus 
passes without a break to physics, and thence to moral 
philosophy; for the "motions of the mind" have physical 
causes. And, by this synthetical method, proceeding from 
principles, we " come to the causes and necessity of constitut- 
ing commonwealths." This method he always kept in view, 
and it gives unity to his theory. But he never carried out the 
impossible task of applying it in detail. He admits that 
there is another and an easier way: "For the causes of the 
motions of the mind are known, not only by ratiocination, 
but also by the experience of every man that takes the pains 
to observe those motions within himself." If he "will but 
examine his own mind, " he will find "that the appetites of 
men and the passions of their minds are such that, unless 
they be restrained by some power, they will always be making 
war upon one another." By adopting this method Hobbes 
thinks he can appeal to each man's experience to confirm 
the truth of his doctrine. 

Leviathan is divided into four parts, which treat, re- 
spectively, of Man, of a Commonwealth, of a Christian 



62 Thomas Hobbes 

Commonwealth, and of the Kingdom of Darkness. Man 
comes first, for he is both the matter and the artificer of the 
Leviathan ; and, at the outset, he is considered alone, as an 
individual thing played upon by external forces; "for there 
is no conception in a man's mind which hath not at first, 
totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense." 
Diverse external motions produce diverse motions in us ; and, 
in reality, there is nothing else ; "but their appearance to us is 
fancy, " though this name is commonly restricted to "decay- 
ing sense." The thoughts thus raised succeed one another 
in an order sometimes controlled by a "passionate thought, " 
sometimes not. By ' ' the most noble and profitable invention 
of speech, names have been given to thoughts, whereby 
society and science have been made possible, and also absurd- 
ity : for words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by 
them; but they are the money of fools." Reason is but 
reckoning; addition and subtraction are its processes; logic 
is "computation." So far, man is regarded as if he were a 
thinking being only. But he is also active. The internal 
motions set up by the action of objects upon the senses be- 
come reactions upon the external world ; and these reactions 
are all of the nature of tendencies towards that which "helps 
the vital motion, " that is, ministers to the preservation of the 
individual, or tendencies away from things of an opposite 
nature. Thus we have appetite or desire for certain things, 
and these we are said to love, and we call them good. In a 
similar way we have aversion from certain other things 
which we hate and call evil. Pleasure is "the appearance or 
sense of good"; displeasure, "the appearance or sense of 
evil." Starting from these definitions, Hobbes proceeds to 
describe the whole emotional and active nature of man as a 
consistent scheme of selfishness. The following characteristic 
summary comes from The Elements of Law: 

The comparison of the life of man to a race, though it holdeth 
not in every point, yet it holdeth so well for this our purpose, that 
we may thereby both see and remember almost all the passions 



The Passions of Man 63 

before mentioned. But this race we must suppose to have no 
other goal, nor other garland, but being foremost; and in it: 

To endeavour, is appetite. 

To be remiss, is sensuality. 

To consider them behind, is glory. 

To consider them before, humility. 

To lose ground with looking back, vain glory. 

To be holden, hatred. 

To turn back, repentance. 

To be in breath, hope. 

To be weary, despair. 

To endeavour to overtake the next, emulation. 

To supplant or overthrow, envy. 

To resolve to break through a stop foreseen, courage. 

To break through a sudden stop, anger. 

To break through with ease, magnanimity. 

To lose ground by little hindrances, pusillanimity. 

To fall on the sudden, is disposition to weep. 

To see another fall, disposition to laugh. 

To see one out-gone whom we would not, is pity. 

To see one out-go we would not, is indignation. 

To hold fast by another, is to love. 

To carry him on that so holdeth, is charity. 

To hurt one's-self for haste, is shame. 

Continually to be out-gone, is misery. 

Continually to out-go the next before, is felicity. 

And to forsake the course, is to die. 

Out of this contention of selfish units Hobbes, in some 
way, has to derive morality and the social order. Yet in the 
state of nature there are no rules for the race of life — not 
even the rule of the strongest, for Hobbes thinks that there 
is little difference between men's faculties, and at any rate 
"the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest." 
Thus for gain, for safety, and for reputation (which is a sign 
of power) each man desires whatever may preserve or enrich 
his own life, and indeed by nature "every man has a right to 
everything, even to one another's body." Thus the natural 
state of man is a state of war, in which "every man is enemy 



64 Thomas Hobbes 

to every man." In this condition, as he points out, there is 
no place for industry, or knowledge, or arts, or society, but 
only " continual fear and danger of violent death; and the 
life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Nor, 
in this state, is there any difference of right and wrong, mine 
and thine; "force and fraud are in war the two cardinal 
virtues." 

Hobbes betrays some hesitation in speaking of the his- 
torical reality of this state of universal war. But the point, 
perhaps, is not fundamental. What is essential is the view 
of human nature as so constituted as to make every man his 
neighbour's enemy. The view was not entirely new ; he was 
not the first satirist of the "golden age." His originality lies 
in the consistency of his picture of its anarchy, and in the 
amazing skill with which he makes the very misery of this 
state lead on to social order: the freedom of anarchy yields 
at once and for ever to the fetters of power. The transition 
is effected by the social contract — an instrument familiar 
to medieval philosophers and jurists. So long as the state 
of nature endures, life is insecure and wretched. Man cannot 
improve this state, but he can get out of it. The fundamental 
law of nature is to seek peace and follow it; and from this 
emerges the second law, that, for the sake of peace, a man 
should be willing to lay down his right to all things, when 
other men are also willing to do so. From these two are 
derived all the laws of nature of the moralists. 

The laws of nature are immutable and eternal, says 
Hobbes, and in so saying conforms to the traditional view — 
but with one great difference. Hooker, who followed the 
older theory, had said that the laws of nature "bind men 
absolutely, even as they are men, although they have never 
any settled fellowship, never any solemn agreement amongst 
themselves." This is not Hobbes's view. He says indeed 
that "the laws of nature oblige in foro inter no " but this 
means simply that "they bind to a desire they should take 
place"; on the other hand they do not always bind " in foro 
externo y that is, to the putting them in act." "For he that 



The Laws of Nature 65 

should be modest, and tractable, and perform all he promises, 
in such time and place where no man else should do so, 
should but make himself a prey to others, and procure his 
own certain ruin, contrary to the ground of all laws of nature, 
which tend to nature ' s preservation . " As defined by Hobbes , 
the law of nature (lex naturalis) is as egoistic in its reference 
as the right of nature (jus naturale). The latter is "the 
liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will him- 
self, for the preservation of his own nature, that is to say of 
his own life. ' ' And the law of nature ' ' is a precept or general 
rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do 
that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means 
of preserving the same, and to omit that by which he thinketh 
it may be best preserved." The one asserts a liberty, the 
other imposes an obligation. But what is permitted and 
what is required are equally, for each man, his own preserva- 
tion. Justice, gratitude, etc., are among Hobbes's laws of 
nature; but their authority is not absolute; it is strictly 
conditional on other men being willing to obey them; and 
this requires an agreement of wills — a contract. Contracts, 
again, require a power to enforce them: "covenants of 
mutual trust where there is a fear of not performance on 
either part are invalid"; and the only way to obtain such a 
common power is for all men to give up their rights to one 
man, or one assembly of men, and to acknowledge his acts 
as their own "in those things which concern the common 
peace and 6afety. " This man, or assembly, will thus bear the 
' 'person ' ' of the whole multitude. They have contracted with 
one another to be his subjects. But the sovereign himself 
is under no contract : he has rights but no duties. 

From this it follows logically that sovereignty cannot 
be limited, divided, or forfeited. The conduct of the com- 
monwealth in peace and war, and the rights of subjects 
against one another, are decided by the sovereign. He is 
sole legislator, supreme ruler, and supreme judge. And this 
holds whether the sovereignty lie in one man or in an as- 
sembly. Hobbes always maintained the superiority of mon- 
f 



66 Thomas Hobbes 

archy to other forms of government; but he never thought 
that this superiority was capable of the demonstrative proof 
that he claimed for his general theory. There is a story that, 
before leaving Paris, Hobbes told Edward Hyde (afterwards 
Earl of Clarendon) that he was publishing Leviathan because 
he "had a mind to go home." If he was serious in making 
the remark reported by Clarendon, he must have been re- 
ferring to the "Review and Conclusion, " with which the work 
closes, and in which he speaks of the time at which submission 
to a conqueror may lawfully be made. The book in no way 
modifies his earlier views on the merits of monarchy. 

A man cannot serve two masters: "mixed government" 
is no government ; nor can the spiritual power be independent 
of the temporal. The doctrines "that every private man is 
judge of good and evil actions," and "that whatsoever a 
man does against his conscience is a sin, " are seditious and 
repugnant to civil society. By living in a commonwealth a 
man takes the law for his conscience. These positions may 
seem to complete the political theory, and few readers now 
care to pursue the matter further. But Hobbes 's common- 
wealth professes to be a Christian commonwealth. He must 
show the place which religion occupies in it, and also expose 
the errors which have led to nations being overshadowed by 
the spiritual power. His theory is Erastianism pushed to its 
extremest limits. The inner life — the true home of religion 
for the religious man — shrinks to a point ; while its external 
expression in doctrine and observance is described as part of 
the order that depends on the will of the sovereign. Hobbes 
can cite Scripture for his purpose ; he anticipates some of the 
results of modern Biblical criticism ; and he has theories about 
God, the Trinity, the atonement, and the last judgment — all 
of them in harmony with his general principles. His doctrine 
of God is, in modern phrase, agnostic. The attributes we 
ascribe to him only signify our desire to honour him: "we 
understand nothing of what he is, but only that he is." In 
this Hobbes follows the doctrine of negative attributes, 
worked out by some medieval theologians. But his doctrine 



A Christian Commonwealth 67 

of the Trinity is surely original. It is "in substance this: 
that God who is always one and the same was the person 
represented by Moses, the person represented by his Son in- 
carnate, and the person represented by the apostles." Again, 
the kingdom of God is a real kingdom, instituted by cove- 
nant or contract : which contract was made by Moses, broken 
by the election of Saul to the kingship, restored by Christ, 
and proclaimed by the apostles. But the kingdom of Christ 
"is not of this world"; it is of the world to come after the 
general resurrection; "therefore neither can his ministers 
(unless they be kings) require obedience in his name." 

There are two things specially opposed to this theory. 
On the one hand, there is the enthusiasm which results from 
the claim either to personal illumination by the spirit of God 
or to private interpretation of Scripture. On the other hand, 
there is the claim to dominion on the part of the organised 
spiritual power. Both claims were rampant in Hobbes's day, 
and he seeks to undermine them both by criticism. There is 
no argument, he says, by which a man can be convinced that 
God has spoken immediately to some other man, ' ' who (being 
a man) may err, and (which is more) may lie." And, as 
regards Scripture, it is for sovereigns as the sole legislators to 
say which books are canonical, and therefore to them also 
must belong the authority for their interpretation. Of all 
the abuses that constitute what Hobbes calls the Kingdom 
of Darkness, the greatest arise from the erroneous tenet 
"that the present church now militant on earth is the king- 
dom of God." Through this error not only the Roman, but 
also the presbyterian, clergy have been the authors of dark- 
ness in religion, and encroached upon the civil power. The 
Roman Church alone has been thorough in its work. The 
pope, in claiming dominion over all Christendom, has for- 
saken the true kingdom of God, and he has built up his 
power out of the ruins of heathen Rome. For "the papacy 
is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, 
sitting crowned upon the grave thereof." 

Taken as a whole, Hobbes's Leviathan has two char- 



68 Thomas Hobbes 

acteristics which stamp it with the mark of genius. In the 
first place, it is a work of great imaginative power, which 
shows how the whole fabric of human life and society is built 
up out of simple elements. And, in the second place, it is 
distinguished by a remarkable logical consecutiveness, so 
that there are very few places in which any lack of coherence 
can be detected in the thought. It is true that the social 
order, as Hobbes presents it, produces an impression of arti- 
ficialty ; but this is hardly an objection, for it was his deliber- 
ate aim to show the artifice by which it had been constructed 
and the danger which lay in any interference with the 
mechanism. It is true also that the state of nature and the 
social contract are fictions passed off as facts; but, even to 
this objection, an answer might be made from within the 
bounds of his theory. It is in his premisses, not in his reason- 
ing, that the error lies. If human nature were as selfish and 
anarchical as he represents it, then morality and the political 
order could arise and flourish only by its restraint, and the 
alternative would be, as he describes it, between complete 
insecurity and absolute power. But, if his view of man be 
mistaken, then the whole fabric of his thought crumbles. 
When we recognise that the individual is neither real nor 
intelligible apart from his social origin and traditions, and 
that the social factor influences his thought and motives, the 
opposition between self and others becomes less fundamental, 
the abrupt alternatives of Hobbism lose their validity, and 
it is possible to regard morality and the state as expressing 
the ideal and sphere of human activity, and not as simply 
the chains by which man's unruly passions are kept in check. 

The most powerful criticism of Hobbes's political theory 
which appeared in his lifetime was contained in the Oceana 
of James Harrington, published in 1656; and the criticism 
gained in effectiveness from the author's own constructive 
doctrine. This he set forth under the thin disguise of a 
picture of an imaginary commonwealth. The device was 
familiar enough at the time. More and Bacon in England, 



Ideal Commonwealths 69 

and Campanella 1 in Italy, had already followed the ancient 
model by describing an ideal state, which both More and 
Bacon placed in some unknown island of the west. The 
Utopia of Sir Thomas More was published in 15 16 and Eng- 
lished by Ralph Robynson in 1551. The work is a political 
romance. The spirit of the Renaissance was still fresh when 
the author wrote, and it made him imagine a new world to 
which the old order might conform and, by conforming, 
escape the evils of its present condition. There is not in it 
any attempt at a philosophical analysis of the nature of the 
state, but only an account of a government and people de- 
voted to the cause of social welfare. Supreme power is in the 
hands of a prince, but he and all other magistrates are elected 
by the people ; and it is in its account of the life of the people 
that the interest of the work lies. They detest war "as a 
thing very beastly" and "count nothing so much against 
glory as glory gotten in war." Their life is one of peace and 
freedom, of justice and equality. There is no oppression, 
industrial or religious; but work and enjoyment are shared 
alike by all : " In other places, they speak still of the common- 
wealth, but every man procureth his own private gain. 
Here, where nothing is private, the common affairs be 
earnestly looked upon. . . . Nothing is distributed after 
a niggish sort, neither is there any poor man or beggar. 
And though no man have any thing, yet every man is 
rich." 

Bacon's fable New Atlantis (1627) is only a fragment, and 
has little of the charm that distinguishes More's romance. 
Its interest lies in the description of Solomon's House, which 
may be taken as Bacon's ideal of the public endowment of 
science. We are told that "his lordship thought also in this 
present fable to have composed a frame of laws, or of the 
best state or mould of a commonwealth " ; but, unfortunately, 
he preferred to work at his natural history, so that we learn 
nothing about the government of his ideal community, and 
little about the social characteristics of the people, though he 

1 Realis philosophiae epilogisticcB partes iv (containing civitas solis), 1623. 



70 Thomas Hobbes 

descants on the dignity of their manners and on the magni- 
ficence of their costumes. 

Harrington's Oceana is a work of a different kind. It has 
none of the imaginative quality of Utopia or even of New 
A tlantis. Much of it reads like a state paper or the schedules 
of a budget. The reference to present affairs is too thinly 
disguised for any artistic purpose. "Oceana" is of course 
England, and the Lord Archon pervades the book as his 
prototype, Oliver, pervaded the English government. In all 
the councils of Oceana he has always the last word, and his 
speeches are long, convincing, and wearisome; he will even 
digress into sketching the history of the world. The author 
was probably ill-advised when he threw his work into the 
romantic form. He has a real insight into politics, and can 
see some things which were concealed from Hobbes's vision. 
He never loses sight of the important fact that government 
is only one factor in social life. The form of government, he 
holds, will follow the distribution of property: "where there 
is inequality of estates there must be inequality of power; 
and where there is inequality of power there can be no 
commonwealth." The commonwealth should exhibit equal- 
ity both in its foundation and in the superstructure. The 
former is to be secured by an agrarian law limiting the 
amount of property which can be held by one man, so that 
"no one man or number of men, within the compass of the 
few or aristocracy, can come to overpower the whole people 
by their possessions in land" ; and Harrington explained the 
recent change in the government of the country by the 
gradual shifting of the balance of property from king and 
lords to the commons. Equality in the superstructure will be 
attained by means of a rotation or succession to the magis- 
tracy secured by "the suffrage of the people given by the 
ballot." In this way will be constituted the three orders: 
"the senate debating and proposing, the people resolving, 
and the magistracy executing." The need for distinguishing 
the orders is emphasised in Harrington's Political Aphorisms, 
where he says that "a popular assembly without a senate 



Harrington's Oceana 71 

cannot be wise, " and that a "senate without a popular 
assembly will not be honest." A commonwealth thus 
rightly instituted, so he thinks, can never swerve from its 
principles, and has in it no ' ' principle of mortality." Yet the 
constitution which he proposed comes short of consistent 
democracy, and falls in with the spirit of the time. The 
function of the one great man is recognised : " a parliament of 
physicians would never have found out the circulation of the 
blood, nor would a parliament of poets have written Virgil's 
iEneis." Thus the great man is right to aim at the sove- 
reignty when the times are out of joint, so that he may set 
them right and establish the reign of law; and the book ends 
with his proclamation as Lord Archon for life. The nobility 
or gentry have also their place: "there is something first in 
the making of a commonwealth, then in the governing of it, 
and last of all in the leading of its armies, which . . . seems 
to be peculiar only to the genius of a gentleman." Like Mil- 
ton, Harrington argues for liberty of conscience in matters 
of religion — though he would disallow "popish, Jewish, or 
idolatrous" worship. Unlike Milton, however, he does not 
exclude the state from the sphere of religion: "a common- 
wealth is nothing else but the national conscience. And if 
the conviction of a man's private conscience produces his 
private religion, the conviction of the national conscience 
must produce a national religion." 

Sir Robert Filmer was also among the critics of Hobbes's 
politics, though he owes his fame to the circumstance that 
he was himself criticised by Locke. He maintained the 
doctrine of absolute power as strongly as Hobbes did, and 
like him thought that limited monarchy meant anarchy; 
and he had written on these topics in King Charles's time. 
But he would not admit that this power could rest on con- 
tract, and, in his Original of Government (1652), attacked 
Hobbes as well as Milton and Grotius. His own views are 
set forth in his Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings, 
first published in 1680, twenty-seven years after his death. 
Filmer was by no means devoid of critical insight. He saw 



72 Thomas Hobbes 

that the doctrine that all men are by nature free and equal 
is not true historically and, therefore, is no good ground for 
making popular consent the origin of government. "Late 
writers, " he says, "have taken up too much upon trust from 
the subtle schoolmen who, to be sure to thrust down the 
king below the pope, thought it the safest course to advance 
the people above the king. ' ' He thinks that ' ' a great family, 
as to the rights of sovereignty, is a little monarchy/' and 
Hobbes had said the same ; but Filmer traces all kingship to 
the subjection of children to their parents, which is both 
natural and a divine ordinance. There has never been a 
more absolute dominion than that which Adam had over the 
whole world. And kings are Adam's heirs. In developing 
this thesis, the author diverges into a reading of history more 
fantastic than anything suggested by Bellarmine or Hobbes, 
and delivers himself up an easy prey to Locke's criticism. 

Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, is also to be counted 
among the critics of Hobbes's political theory. His Brief 
Survey of the dangerous and pernicious Errors to Church and 
State in Mr. Hobbes's book (1674) is a protest against the 
paradoxes of Leviathan, but is lacking in any element of 
constructive criticism. 

John Bramhall, bishop of Deny, and afterwards arch- 
bishop of Armagh, was one of the most vigorous and per- 
sistent of Hobbes's critics. His first work was in defence of 
the royal power (1643). Afterwards he engaged in a dis- 
cussion of the question of freewill with Hobbes when they 
were both in France. When the controversy was renewed 
and became public, he wrote A Defence of the True Liberty 
of Human Actions from Antecedent and Extrinsical Necessity 
( io 55). Hobbes replied, and Bramhall followed in 1658 with 
Castigations of Mr. Hobbes, to which there was an appendix 
called "The Catching of Leviathan the Great Whale." In 
this appendix, more famous than the rest of the treatise, he 
attacked the whole religious and political theory of Hobbes, 
and gave rise to the complaint of the latter that the bishop 
"hath put together diverse sentences picked out of my 






Critics of Hobbes 73 

Leviathan, which stand there plainly and firmly proved, and 
sets them down without their proofs, and without the order 
of their dependance one upon another; and calls them 
atheism, blasphemy, impiety, subversion of religion, and by 
other names of that kind." 

Two younger polemical writers may be mentioned along 
with Bramhall. Thomas Tenison, a future archbishop of 
Canterbury, was one of the young churchmen militant who 
must needs try their arms "in thundering upon Hobbes 's 
steel-cap." In The Creed of Mr. Hobbes examined (1670), he 
selected a number of Hobbes' s confident assertions and set 
them together so as to show their mutual inconsistencies. 
In two dialogues, published in 1672 and 1673, John Eachard, 
afterwards master of St. Catharine's Hall, Cambridge, 
adopted a similar method, and showed no little wit and 
learning in his criticism. 

These writers are the most notable of a number of early 
critics of Hobbes who made no independent contributions 
of their own to philosophy. And their criticism dealt with 
results rather than with principles. A satisfactory criticism 
of Hobbes has to penetrate to the principles of the mechani- 
cal philosophy which he adopted, and to the view of human 
nature which he set forth in conformity with those principles. 
Criticism of this more fundamental kind was attempted by 
certain of the Cambridge Platonists, especially by Cud worth 
and More; and they were fitted for the task by their sym- 
pathetic study of the spiritual philosophy of Plato in the 
ancient world and of Descartes in their own day — two 
thinkers for whom Hobbes had no appreciation. 



CHAPTER V 
The Cambridge Platonists 

THE Cambridge Platonists" is the name given to a 
group of religious thinkers who flourished at Cam- 
bridge in the middle and latter half of the seventeenth 
century. They are referred to by Gilbert Burnet, who had 
visited Cambridge in 1663, as a "set of men" who had pre- 
vented the Church of England from having "quite lost her 
esteem over the nation. " ' ' These, ' ' he says, ' ' were generally 
of Cambridge, formed under some divines, the chief of whom 
were Drs. Whichcote, Cudworth, Wilkins, More, and Worth- 
ington." Other names are commonly included in the list — 
John Smith, Nathaniel Culverwel, George Rust, Edward 
Fowler, and Simon Patrick. But there is no good ground 
for counting Wilkins among them. He was an Oxford man 
who held the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, for 
a year before the Restoration ; he was eminent as a man of 
science 1 and was one of the founders of the Royal Society; 
but his theological leanings do not seem to have been the 
same as those of the Cambridge school. 

The writers enumerated were not all Platonists or even 
all philosophers. It was their religious attitude that led, in 
the first instance, to their being spoken of as a school and 
receiving a common name. And so they were called "lati- 
tude men." They appeared when the High Church system 

1 And author of An Essay towards a real Character and a Philosophical 
Language, 1668. 

74 



Benjamin Whichcote 75 

of Laud was in the ascendant ; they flourished under the rule 
of the presby terians and of the independents ; and the Restora- 
tion scarcely disturbed them. They did not take sides with 
any existing parties ; and it is to the credit of all parties that 
they were allowed to carry on their work at the university. 
Whichcote alone lost his office — the provostship of King's 
College — at the Restoration, and retired to a parish where 
he was not interfered with. Their doctrine was equally re- 
moved from Calvinism and from High Churchism. They 
avoided the subtleties of the prevailing theologies, opposed 
credulity and enthusiasm (or the claim to private inspira- 
tion), held that true religion must harmonise with rational 
truth, and laid stress on the moral and spiritual factors in 
religion. 

Benjamin Whichcote (1610-83) is regarded as the origina- 
tor of the movement. Burnet says that he "set young 
students much on reading the ancient philosophers, chiefly 
Plato, Tully, and Plotin"; and, in the university, his former 
tutor blamed him for setting Plato and Plotinus above the 
gospel and reason above the spirit. Burnet's statement was 
made long after the days of which he wrote and cannot be 
counted strong evidence; and the contemporary criticism 
shows a theological animus of the kind which often loses 
touch with accuracy. It is doubtful how far Whichcote 
guided the reading of his pupils into Platonic or even philo- 
sophical channels, and it is not likely that he would have de- 
scribed himself as a philosopher. But there can be no doubt 
that he encouraged a more rational and spiritual view of 
Christian doctrine than was prevalent at the time. The more 
famous Cambridge Platonists (with the notable exception 
of More) were students at Emmanuel College during the 
period (1632-44) of his tutorship there; and for twenty years 
(1636-56) he lectured each week in Trinity Church, where 
the members of the university generally flocked to hear him. 

A few sermons, discourses, and aphorisms, the first pub- 
lication of which was in 1698, are all that remain to us of 
these discourses, and form almost the only record of his 



76 The Cambridge Platonists 

thought. They contain few references to Platonic philoso- 
phers, such as filled the pages of his followers, and it would be 
vain to read a system of philosophy into them. But they 
show an attitude of mind, never too common and rare in 
those troubled times, which combines spiritual religion with 
intellectual reflection. "Religion," he holds — and this, 
after all, is very near the central doctrine of the Platonists — 
"is the introduction of the divine life into the soul of man" ; 
and the mind must be free from passion in order to admit it : 
"there is no genuine and proper effect of religion where the 
mind of man is not composed, sedate, and calm." "The 
first operation in religion is mental and intellectual." It 
banishes credulity and "enthusiasm." In words which 
remind us of those used by Hobbes 1 in the interest of a far 
different view of the world, Whichcote writes, "If you say 
you have a revelation from God, I must have a revelation 
from God too before I can believe you." God indeed reveals 
himself in the mind of man "more than in any part of the 
world besides"; but this revelation cannot conflict with the 
universal reason of mankind. Nor does it favour corporate 
authority any more than private "enthusiasm": "the sense 
of the Church is not a rule but a thing ruled." And the reve- 
lation does not extend to intricacies of theological doctrine : 
1 ' truth lies in a little compass and narrow room. ' ' One thing, 
however, is unalterable and final, and that is the moral part 
of religion; it remains certain and binding whatever con- 
troversy there may be about particular doctrines of theology. 
"I will not, " he said, "break the certain laws of charity for 
a doubtful doctrine or of uncertain truth." 

There may be little philosophy in all this ; but it is teaching 
which is well fitted to be the basis of philosophical reflec- 
tion and to give it stimulus. At least it reveals the atmos- 
phere which the Cambridge Platonists breathed. Inspired 
by it they set to work to build up a system of thought which 
would refute and replace the naturalism of Hobbes ; and the 
main doctrines of their system were derived from the school 

1 Cp. above, p. 68. 



Henry More 77 

of Plato. The most important of these philosophical writers 
are More, Cudworth, Smith, and Culverwel. 

Henry More, the son of a country gentleman in Lincoln- 
shire, was born at Grantham in 1614 and educated at Eton 
and Christ's College, Cambridge. He entered Christ's in 
December, 1631, six months before Milton left, and he made 
his home in the college till his death in 1687. Even as an 
undergraduate, he says, "the knowledge of natural and 
divine things seemed to me the highest pleasure and felicity 
imaginable." He took no part in affairs, and passed through 
Civil War, Commonwealth, and Restoration without dis- 
turbance. But he was keenly interested in all that concerned 
the life of mind, and followed the scientific investigations of 
the day as well as its theological controversies. His father 
was a Calvinist in theology; but this creed he seems never 
to have accepted, and he early discovered an affinity for the 
doctrines of Plato and his school. He was also immedi- 
ately attracted by the writings of Descartes. In his first 
publication (A Platonical Song of the Soul, 1642, afterwards 
included in his Philosophical Poems, 1647, he professed 
himself a follower of Plato and Plotinus ; and his first letter 
to Descartes (dated 7 December, 1648) expressed an almost 
equal admiration for the modern author. He was a prolific 
writer and would return again and again to his books, adding 
prefaces and scholia, but doing little or nothing in the way 
of revision or condensation. His chief works are An Antidote 
against Atheism, 1653; Conjectura Cabbalistica, 1653; En- 
thusiasmus Triumphatus, 1656; The Immortality of the Soul, 
1659; The Grand Mystery of Godliness, 1660; The Mystery of 
Iniquity [anti-papal and prophetic], 1664; Enchiridion Ethi- 
cum, 1666; Divine Dialogues, 1668; Philosophiae Teutonicae 
Censura, 1670; Enchiridion Metaphysicum, 1671. In 1662 
he published A Collection of Philosophical Writings, and he 
afterwards issued a Latin translation of his works: Opera 
Theologica in 1675, and Opera Philosophica (two volumes) in 
1679. 



78 The Cambridge Platonists 

More's thought was rooted in the Christian religion; 
but there were other formative influences at work. In the 
first place that of Plato : and More was perhaps the earliest 
writer who can be called, in strictness of language, a Cam- 
bridge Platonist. Then there was the influence of Descartes, 
whose writings are said to have been made known in Cam- 
bridge, some years before, by a senior fellow of Christ's who 
had met the author on the continent. * In addition mention 
must be made of the influence derived from writings and 
records of experiences which may t>e brought together under 
the name "occult." Of these influences the Platonist was 
the most persistent, though that of occultism seems to have 
increased, whereas the influence of Descartes waned. 

More conceived the Christian religion as "rational 
throughout, " and had proved it so, he thought, in his Mys- 
tery of Godliness. The design of his philosophical works was 
"not to theologise in philosophy but to draw an exoteric 
fence or exterior fortification about theology" by rebutting 
the arguments against theism and immortality, and to this 
purpose was due his "interweaving of Platonism and of 
Cartesianism." Both contributed to the refutation of the 
materialism which Hobbes was now impressing upon 
the world. Plato had given a spiritual interpretation of the 
universe, and Descartes, in working out his mechanical 
theory, showed the bounds which mechanism could not pass. 

In the letters to Descartes, More's admiration is ex- 
pressed in the warmest terms: no other philosophy, he says, 
unless it be the Platonic, is so opposed to atheism. But he 
has two objections — to Descartes' identification of extension 
with body, and to the view that the brutes are automata. 
From the latter doctrine his mind revolts; he would rather 
admit the immortality of all animals, if that is the only 
alternative. Both objections have to do with the range of 
the mechanical theory, but the former is the more funda- 
mental of the two. Descartes, in his reply, urged that true 
extension is found only in bodies, and further that body, if 

1 Cp. J. Bass Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, iii., p. 606. 



Innate Ideas 79 

defined otherwise than as extended, would have to be defined 
as sensible, that is to say, by its relation to us, and would 
thus lose its claim to be regarded as an independent sub- 
stance. The discussion then went on to the question of 
incorporeal extension — which More attributed to God and 
the angels and the mind of man, while its possibility was 
denied by Descartes. The infinity of God — it was argued by 
the latter — does not consist in his "existing everywhere," 
but in his power: to which More replied that the power of 
God is a mode of God's essence, so that, if the power of God 
is everywhere, God is everywhere. The correspondence was 
broken off by the death of Descartes. 

The discussion concerned the limits of mechanism. 
Descartes' dualism gave a perfectly precise method for deter- 
mining them, but it led to the paradox that animals were 
mere machines. More started by trying to draw the line 
elsewhere, but he was gradually led to see that it could not 
be drawn by separating reality into two distinct parts, one 
of which was mechanically determined and the other was not. 
His contemporary Hobbes saw the same. Both relinquished 
dualism: Hobbes from the first offering a mechanical inter- 
pretation of all reality, whereas More ended with the con- 
clusion "that there is no purely mechanical phenomenon in 
the whole universe. " * 

With many digressions and much repetition More was 
working towards a spiritual view of the world as a whole. 
There is no general principle, he says, which distinguishes 
his writings from others that "are writ with freedom and 
reason." He lays down one "royal rule," however: "not 
to judge of the truth of any proposition till we have a settled 
and determinate apprehension of the terms thereof"; and 
to this he adds the caveat that "what will prove anything 
will prove nothing." But reason itself needs something to 
go upon. According to his view there is "a certain principle 
more noble and inward than reason itself, and without which 
reason will falter or at least reach but to mean and frivolous 

1 Divine Dialogues (1668), ''to the Reader, " p. x. 



80 The Cambridge Platonists 

things." He calls this principle Divine Sagacity — though it 
is of "so retruse a nature " that he hesitates how to name it. 
It is better than reason, being due to the operation of the 
divine spirit, and it needs purity in man's spirit for its recep- 
tion. This intuitive insight (if it may be called so) is after- 
wards confirmed by the exact methods of reason itself. And 
so he describes it as "a more inward, compendious, and com- 
prehensive presentation of truth, even antecedaneous to that 
reason which in theories of greatest importance approves 
itself afterwards, upon the exactest examination, to be most 
solid and perfect every way. " z 

More defends the doctrine of innate notions or ideas. 
That doctrine is questioned, he thinks, because men mistake 
the "extrinsecal occasion" of thinking for its "adequate or 
principal cause. ' ' External objects are rather ' ' the reminders 
than the first begetters or implanters" of our knowledge. 2 
And he gives an example of his meaning: "Exhibit to the 
soul through the outward senses the figure of a circle; she 
acknowledged presently this to be one kind of figure, and 
can add forthwith that if it be perfect, all the lines from 
some one point of it drawn to the perimeter must be exactly 
equal. . . . But this accuracy . . . cannot be set out in 
any material subject: therefore it remains that she hath a 
more full and exquisite knowledge of things in herself than 
the matter can lay open before her." Further, "relative 
. .^uiis or ideas, " such as cause, effect, whole and part, like 
and unlike, "cannot be impresses of any material object 
from without"; but "are from the soul herself within, and 
are the natural furniture of human understanding. " 3 These 
innate ideas are not sensible but intellectual, "our own modes 
of considering sensible objects " ; they include "many logical, 
metaphysical, mathematical, and some moral notions." 4 

The argument for Immortality is preceded by a series of 
axioms. One of these is that the only faculties for deter- 

v Philosophical Writings, preface general. 

2 Antidote against Atheism, book I, ch. v. 3 Ibid., I, vi. 

* Antidote, appendix, ch. ii., §5. 



Spiritual Substance 81 

mining truth are "common notions, external sense, and evi- 
dent and undeniable demonstration." Common notions are 
defined as "whatever is noematically true, that is to say, true 
at first to all men in their wits, upon a clear perception of the 
terms, without any further discourse or reasoning. ' ' Another 
axiom is that ' ' the subject, or naked essence or substance of a 
thing, is utterly unconceivable to any of our faculties." 
Hence the immediate attributes of a substance are indemon- 
strable ; and further, if some power, property, or operation be 
discovered which is incompatible to one substance, another 
substance must exist to which it is compatible. 

From his view of knowledge as depending on the nature 
of the soul itself follows More's first argument for the exist- 
ence of God. We have an idea of an absolutely perfect 
being, that is, a spiritual substance, eternal, infinite in essence 
and goodness, omnipotent, omniscient, and of itself neces- 
sarily existent. This is not a fortuitous or arbitrary concept 
but necessary and natural to the soul, and therefore "true 
according to the light of nature." More does not confuse 
essence and existence; but he holds that there is one idea, 
though only one, in which they cannot be separated. In this 
respect he follows Anselm ; but he is not more successful than 
Anselm was in establishing that in this one case essence does 
involve existence. He is aware also that it has been pointed 
out that existence is not a perfection or any quality ; and he 
tries to meet the objection by the argument that it is better 
than non-existence. * 

This ontological argument is supported by proofs of the 
cosmological and teleological varieties — from the final cause 
of the implanting of the idea of God in the soul, from con- 
science and from mental affections, and from the phenomena 
of external nature. Under these heads comes a survey of the 
world from the order of the heavens to the signatures of 
plants; and this is followed by a collection of ghost stories 
which More takes as evidence of the reality of spiritual exist- 
ence. All the evidence confirms the thesis: "the external 

1 Ibid., appendix, iv., I. 
6 



82 The Cambridge Platonists 

appearances of things in the world so faithfully seconding 
the undeniable dictates of the innate principles of our own 
minds." 1 

God is defined by More as "spiritual substance." His 
perfection shows that he cannot be corporeal ; and the exist- 
ence of immaterial substance is further proved by the neces- 
sity for a cause of motion, seeing that matter cannot move 
itself, and by reason being required to explain "the order 
and admirable effect of this motion in the world" — as well, 
of course, as by the existence of apparitions. 2 More is careful 
to explain what he means by spirit. All substance, in his 
view, is extended. Matter is a substance which consists of 
parts "discerpible" from one another; its ultimate particles, 
however, are "indiscerpible, " although they may be capable 
of intellectual analysis. These indiscerpible particles are 
without figure : ' ( as infinite greatness has no figure, so infinite 
littleness has none either" — although both are extended. 
Further, matter is impenetrable: no particle of matter can 
be in the same place as another particle. Body, therefore, 
may be defined as "a substance impenetrable and discerp- 
ible." If we discover, as we do, powers or attributes inconsist- 
ent with these, they must belong to a different substance — a 
1 ' substance penetrable and indiscerpible. ' ' And this is Spirit. 3 

More labours to make this notion clear. It is only to be 
expected, he thinks, that "the souls of men, the lowest dregs 
of all the intellectual orders, " 4 should be puzzled by things 
spiritual and intellectual. So clouded are their fancies, that 
even the notion of matter — "in which they tumble and 
wallow" — "seems unimaginable and contradictious." Yet 
the notion of spirit is neither inconsistent nor inconceivable. 
Spirit is like matter in this that it is extended, but in this 
only. The extension of a spiritual being does not imply 
divisibility or separability into parts. It implies the "abso- 
lute powers of self-contraction and dilatation," along with 
the "relative faculties of penetrating, moving, and altering 

1 Antidote, III, xvi. 2 Immortality, I, xi.-xiii. 

3 Immortality, I, iii. * Antidote, appendix, iii., I. 



The Immortality of the Sou! 83 

of the matter." Of this he gives an illustration. "Suppose 
a point of light from which rays out a luminous orb, accord- 
ing to the known principles of optics. This orb of light does 
very much resemble the nature of a spirit, which is diffused 
and extended and yet indivisible." Here then is a symbol of 
dilatation, in which the central essence of a spiritual sub- 
stance "spreads out into a secondary substance." Further, 
the rays from the luminous point may meet an obstacle from 
which, without losing their virtue or being, they are reflected 
back towards the shining centre. And this is a symbol of 
self -contraction. In the exercise of these powers the soul of 
man is limited : it is so closely united to its terrestrial body 
that it can neither withdraw itself from any part of the body 
nor press beyond it, unless the bond of life be loosened. 

In the preface to his treatise on Immortality More had 
recommended the reading of Descartes in the universities 
in order that "students of philosophy may be thoroughly 
exercised in the just extent of the mechanical powers of 
matter, how far they will reach and where they fall short." 
His final view was that there was nothing purely mechani- 
cal. Mechanism, as it might be put, is an aspect of nature, 
but not by itself the explanation of anything in nature. God 
has not simply created the material world and put it under 
mechanical laws. The whole physical universe is pervaded 
by Spirit. This all-pervading spirit is not God himself, but 
the Spirit of Nature or (to use the old term) anima mundi. 
It is " a substance incorporeal but without sense and animad- 
version, " which exercises a "plastical power" upon matter 
"raising such phenomena in the world, by directing the paths 
of the matter and their motion, as cannot be resolved into 
mere mechanical powers. " l It may be said to do for nature 
as a whole what the soul of a plant does for the plant ; and it 
is its further business ' ' to lodge every soul according to her 
rank and merit whenever she leaves the body, " and thus to 
act alone as "the great quarter-master-general of divine 
providence." 2 

1 Immortality, in, xii., I. a Ibid., in, xiii., 10. 



84 The Cambridge Platonists 

Of subordinate spirits More distinguishes four main 
species: seminal forms (X070I axepixcrrixol), the created 
spirits which organise duly prepared matter into life and 
vegetation, proper to this or the other kind of plant; the 
souls of brutes, which, in addition to this intrinsical power of 
vegetation, have also that of sensation; the human soul, 
"which, along with the foregoing, has reason as well (its plastic 
or seminal part being distributed over the body but residing 
chiefly in the heart, its perceptive part being situated in the 
brain) ; and the souls which actuate or inform the vehicles of 
angels and which cannot, like the human soul, be born in a 
terrestrial vehicle. He also refers to the "other orders of 
spirits or immaterial substances, as the v6eq and evaSes, " 
of which "the Platonists write " ; but he passes their specula- 
tions by, as having "more subtlety than either usefulness or 
assurance." 

For the immortality of the soul More does not rely on the 
metaphysical argument from its indiscerpibility : his doctrine 
of creation would have placed a difficulty in the way of such 
an argument. His demonstration rests on the veracity, the 
justice, and especially the goodness of God. A man's mind 
must be sympathetic to morality to feel the full force of the 
argument; "and the noblest and most generous spirit will be 
the most firmly assured of the immortality of the soul." 1 
With the immortality goes the pre-existence of the soul ; this 
doctrine also is "a necessary result of the wisdom and good- 
ness of God. " 2 But the soul is never entirely separate from 
matter: for then it would be out of the world, "the whole 
universe being so thick set with matter or body that there is 
not to be found the least vacuity therein. " 3 At death the 
soul is separated from its terrestrial body, but only to inhabit 
an aerial, from which again it may pass into an ethereal or 
celestial body. In the aerial vehicle, such as demons also 
inhabit, the soul is not quite exempt from fate; but in the 
celestial vehicle it is perfect and secure — "out of the reach of 

1 Immortality, n, xviii., 12. 

2 Ibid., 11, xii. f 7. *Ibid., in, xix., 8. 



More's Ethical Views 85 

that evil principle whose dominion is commensurable with 
misery and death." The upward progress of the soul de- 
pends on its moral development; and of it More gives a 
detailed description, although only to show that his hypo- 
thesis is intelligible, and not as "solicitous whether things 
be just so as I have set them down." Of the downward path 
— if it be a downward path — which leads to incarnation he 
tells us nothing. 

More himself was, he says, incapable of "the least tinc- 
ture of superstition." By superstition he probably meant 
the attitude of mind that seeks salvation in rites and cere- 
monies. He was certainly credulous when alleged facts were 
recorded that seemed to confirm his spiritual view of the 
world. Stories of apparitions of all kinds were welcomed by 
him and embodied in his serious philosophical arguments. 
He gives the evidence for them — which it is no longer possible 
to test. And it must be remembered that he was not alone 
in believing: he belonged to one of the recurring epochs in 
history in which men's minds turn eagerly to abnormal 
phenomena as a guide towards the truth of things. 

His Enchiridion Ethicum is a text-book of ethics which 
follows traditional lines in the main but has some original 
features. In three books it deals with happiness and virtue 
in general ; with the several virtues, which are distinguished 
into principal and derivative ; and with the means by which 
virtue is attained, this last book including a defence of the 
doctrine of freewill. He holds that virtue is not a habit but 
a power — an intellectual power of the soul overruling the 
passions. His treatment of the passions is based upon that 
of Descartes, but goes on to show their relation to good and 
evil. Seeing that the passions are antecedent to deliberation 
and choice, they come from nature and therefore from God; 
and consequently they are good, if followed according to the 
law of nature. This law is a "whisper of the divine law," 
whose voice is most clear and audible in the intellectual state. 
Passion, therefore, is subject not only to nature but to right 
reason. Just as the essence of a thing is taken in by the under- 



86 The Cambridge Platonists 

standing, and a triangle (for instance) is what right reason 
conceives it to be, so it is in ethics. There are unchangeable 
ideas of good and evil, concerning which the mind judges. 
There are certain first truths of morals — ethical noemata or 
axioms. In More's statement, these are mainly formal in 
character, though they include a classification of duties (to 
self, others, God, and virtue itself) and an assertion of the 
"golden rule." Good is defined as that which is grateful, 
pleasant, and congruous to a conscious being and contribu- 
tory to its preservation. At the same time he holds it mere 
madness to assert that whatever is grateful or pleasant is 
therefore good, and that this is the measure of human 
actions. x 

More's doctrine of ethical axioms entitles him to a place 
among the beginners of the intellectualist tradition in Eng- 
lish ethics. He has also been regarded as having anticipated 
the "moral sense" school by his doctrine of the "boniform 
faculty." In some respects this is his most characteristic 
contribution to ethics ; but his expressions are misunderstood 
if held to imply that the bonif orm faculty is allied to sensibil- 
ity rather than to intellect. It is true that he says that what 
is absolutely good is "judged by right reason, but its savour 
and sweetness are perceived by the boniform faculty of the 
soul, " and that by it "we relish or savour what is absolutely 
best and rejoice in it alone." But it is not, like sense, inferior 
to intellect and its provider with material. Rather is it super- 
intellectual. "All moral good, properly so called," says 
More, "is intellectual and divine : intellectual, in so far as its 
essence and truth are defined and known by the intellect; 
divine, in so far as its sweetness is most pleasant and most 
effectually enjoyed in that divine faculty in which we cleave 
unto God — the most pure and absolute good. " 2 The boni- 
form faculty, therefore, would seem to be simply the ethical 
aspect of the "divine sagacity " spoken of in the preface to his 
Philosophical Writings. Like divine sagacity, it is not 
acknowledged by every one, for some are without the sense 

1 Enchiridion Ethicum, I, v., 7. a Ibid., i, v., 1. 



Ralph Cudworth 87 

of God or divine things; and, on this account, his treatise is 
designed to show that intellect of itself recognises the first 
principles of morals. 

Ralph Cudworth, who is generally regarded as the leading 
member of the Cambridge school, was born in 161 7 and began 
residence at Emmanuel College in 1632 — the year following 
that in which More (his senior in age by three years) matricu- 
lated at Christ's. He soon gained a great reputation as a 
scholar and teacher. He became master of Clare Hall in 
1644, professor of Hebrew in 1645, and in 1654 master of 
Christ's College, where he lived till his death in 1688. His 
intellectual affinity with More was very close, but their 
modes of life differed. More was a retired scholar who wrote 
and published book after book, with new editions of them, 
new prefaces, and copious annotations — in spite of his leisure, 
careless of literary form. Cudworth, on the other hand, was 
immersed in the affairs of his college and the duties of his 
professorship and was consulted on public business. His 
earlier publications were not numerous and were not philo- 
sophical in character. But he must have been an unwearied 
worker, as is shown by the masses of manuscript he left 
behind him as well as by the one philosophical book pub- 
lished in his life-time. 

This book is The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 
the first part of which — the only part to be completed — 
appeared in 1678. It is an impressive monument of the 
scholarship of the time; and, unwieldy as it is, it shows a 
systematic plan carried out in a great manner. It is learning 
in the interests of thought; and, although the reader may 
easily go astray among its learned digressions, he feels that 
the author himself kept the reins of his argument well in 
hand. Cudworth's object, like that of More, is to establish 
the spiritual nature of reality. The revival of materialism 
by Hobbes, and the bearing of that theory on the moral life, 
gave occasion to his endeavour. Hobbes is to be refuted; 
but Hobbes is a modern exponent of an ancient theory; 



88 The Cambridge Platonists 

materialism must be tracked to its source in antiquity and its 
faults exposed at their origin. Descartes also, having given a 
mechanical explanation of the physical world, repeated to 
that extent the error of Democritus. What Cud worth did 
not see was that both Descartes and Hobbes had got hold of a 
method of enquiry which was independent of traditional 
opinion, and that mere learning was wasted upon them. The 
view has been held that the ancients were somehow nearer 
the fountain-head of truth than the moderns, and that sound 
doctrine should be sought in the past. This view was 
favoured by ecclesiastical tradition and, although Cud- 
worth did not adopt it, its influence may be traced on his 
method. At the same time, judged by modern standards, his 
historical method — and the same may be said of More's — 
was essentially uncritical. And, where the historical matter 
bulks so largely, it is difficult to disentangle the elements of 
value in the work as a whole. 

When he first started to write, Cudworth had in view 
"only a discourse concerning liberty and necessity." But 
he saw that this took in other things — so many things indeed 
that he never reached his intended subject. The fatalism 
which he set out to refute was of three kinds: first, the 
materialistic and atheistic fatalism, which he calls "Demo- 
critic " ; secondly, the " theistic but immoral fatalism, " which 
refers everything to God and makes the distinction between 
good and evil rest on arbitrary enactment only ; and thirdly, 
another form of theistic fatalism which, although admitting 
moral attributes in God, leaves no place for liberty anywhere 
"and therefore no distributive or retributive justice in the 
world." Now for Cudworth three doctrines form the essen- 
tials of true religion : the being of God ; the eternal nature of 
goodness; and the freedom of man. These three things he 
has to defend against the three forms of fatalism ; and to each 
he had designed to devote a separate book of his great work. 
But only the first book — that against atheism — was com- 
pleted and published. 

The ancient atomists before Democritus — so Cudworth 



Ralph Cudworth 89 

thinks he can prove — were theists and believed in incorporeal 
as well as in corporeal substance. The grounds for his state- 
ment are interesting as showing what may be taken for his- 
torical evidence. According to Strabo, Pythagoras conversed 
at Sidon with the successors of one Moschus and introduced 
their doctrine into Greece. This Moschus lived before the 
Trojan war; he was a Sidonian or Phoenician — a Semite of 
sorts; and his name bears some resemblance to Moses — 
with whom therefore he may be identified. His doctrine — 
the ancient or "Moschical" philosophy — had two parts: 
"atomical physiology and theology or pneumatology." 
Democritus, ''being atheist ically inclined," adopted the 
former and discarded the latter ; Plato took the reverse course. 
Cudworth reviews the various arguments urged against 
theism, and his review is elaborate, subtle, and fair-minded. 
He distinguishes also four forms of atheism : the ' ' hylopathian 
or Anaximandrian, " which derives all things from matter 
in the way of qualities and forms; the "atomical or Demo- 
critical, which doth the same thing in the way of atoms and 
figures"; the " cosmoplastic or Stoical," which refers every- 
thing to "one plastic or methodical but senseless nature"; 
and the "hylozoic or Stratonical, " which ascribes to matter 
as such "a certain living and energetic nature, but devoid of 
all animality, sense, and consciousness." Cudworth' s learn- 
ing was of course bounded by the opportunities of his time, 
and it is not surprising that he held that all atheists were ma- 
terialists or (as he calls them) " corporealists " — that they 
were afflicted by pneumatophobia or "an irrational but 
desperate abhorrence from spirits or incorporeal substances. " 
But he shows insight in not limiting materialism to atomism 
or the mechanical theory. His discussions of hylozoism and 
of the theory of a plastic nature are of interest by bringing 
out the critical difficulty for all non-theistic theories — the 
explanation of the life of mind. On the plastic nature he has 
a long appendix. He holds that it is a reality, not as taking 
the place of God, but as a subordinate instrument of the 
Deity — an incorporeal substance which is the divine art 



90 The Cambridge Platonists 

embodied in nature. It acts for ends, but is not conscious of 
them, and it operates "fatally and sympathetically" accord- 
ing to the laws impressed upon it by perfect intellect. Its 
business is the orderly disposal of matter, but it works 
"vitally and magically" and not, like human art, me- 
chanically. 

Cudworth's positive argument for theism is prefaced by 
the postulate that "there must of necessity be something 
self -existent from eternity." At first he seems to adopt the 
ontological argument: "the true and proper idea of God, in 
its most contracted form, is this, a being absolutely perfect ; 
for this is that alone to which necessary existence is essential 
and of which it is demonstrable. " J But afterwards he goes 
more fully into the matter. He sees that it may be urged 
against the argument that it only shows "that if there be 
anything absolutely perfect, it must exist necessarily and not 
contingently; but it doth not follow that there must of 
necessity be such a perfect being existing." He then sets 
down the best he can on the other side, but thinks it "not 
very probable that many atheists will be convinced thereby," 
and so leaves the question to "the intelligent and impartial 
reader. " 2 He has, however, an argument of his own, which 
is of the same order and which runs somewhat as follows: 
God is at least possible, seeing that the idea of God does not 
involve a contradiction; now this idea includes necessary 
existence in it ; and from these two premisses (if not from the 
latter alone) it follows that God actually is. "A perfect 
necessarily-existent being, upon the bare supposition of its 
non-existence, could no more possibly have been than it could 
possibly hereafter be ; because, if it might have been though 
it be not, then would it not be a necessary existent being": 
"a necessary existent being, if it be possible, it is. " 3 

Cud worth does not rely upon this argument alone. The 
whole world for him is probative of God. He deals equally 
with the problems of "out of nothing " and with the marks of 

1 True Intellectual System (ed. 1845), i., p. 307. 

2 Ibid., iii., pp. 39-41. 3 Ibid., Hi., p. 49. 



The Platonic Trinity 91 

design in nature. He lays stress upon the need for an ex- 
planation of motion (taking occasion to dissect the me- 
chanical explanation of things) and especially of the pheno- 
mena of life and mind. Were there no other substance than 
matter, he argues, there could be neither motion nor intellec- 
tion nor volition, "but all would be a dead lump, nor could 
any one thing penetrate another. " l The idea of incorporeal 
substance is not derived from the "essences" of the scholas- 
tics. These are called eternal, not as being themselves 
substances, but because the knowledge of them is eternal: 
there being an Eternal Mind which comprehends them, of 
which other minds partake. 2 Sensationalism and nominalism 
are also dismissed. "Just and unjust are greater realities in 
nature than hard and soft." There is a scale of being, with 
God at the head and at the foot inanimate matter. 3 But on 
the scale of our knowledge God does not come first. The view 
that knowledge of God is "a praecognitum of all other 
science " has a "plausibility of piety about it " ; but it is self- 
destructive. Not omnipotence itself can alter the nature of 
truth. Truth is not made, but is. "The divine will and 
omnipotence itself hath no imperium upon the divine under- 
standing : for if God understood only by will, he would not 
understand at all. " 4 

Cud worth's historical insight was not equal to his learn- 
ing, and he wasted a mass of erudition in trying to show that 
pagan polytheism had at its back a belief in the one God. 
In the same connection he entered upon a lengthy comparison 
of the Platonic trinity — the "three divine hypostases," as 
Plotinus called them, of monad, mind, and soul — with the 
Christian. They were opposed in some of their developments 
but were in essence at one ; and this is not surprising seeing 
that the Platonic doctrine was probably "at first derived 
from a divine or Mosaic cabala. " s Yet this was dangerous 
ground for Cud worth. Controversialists found heresy in his 



1 True Intellectual System, iii., p. 225. 




3 Ibid., iii., p. 226. 


*Ibid., iii., p. 412. 


* Ibid., iii., p. 33. 


slbid., ii. t p. 340. 



92 The Cambridge Platonists 

utterances on this point and neglected the constructive argu- 
ment of his book. And it has been thought that disappoint- 
ment with its reception had something to do with his failure 
to complete his original design. 

When More was persuaded to issue a text-book of ethics, 
Cudworth resented the plan as an intrusion into a field which 
he had made his own. He had himself, he said, had a "de- 
sign concerning Good and Evil, or Natural Ethics." The 
reference may be to a manuscript on Moral Good and Evil 
of nearly a thousand pages, which has never been printed; 
or it may be to a shorter work — A Treatise concerning Eternal 
and Immutable Morality — which was published in 1731, 
forty-three years after the author's death. The latter treatise 
begins and ends with ethical conceptions, but, for the most 
part, it is occupied with questions belonging to the theory of 
knowledge. It is a striking contribution to epistemology, 
and, in literary form, it is comparatively free from learned 
irrelevancies. 

Cudworth starts with moral distinctions and contends 
that they are not relative or arbitrary. But the position is 
perfectly general and is not limited to morality. "Things 
are what they are not by will but by nature." God can 
make a thing exist or not exist ; but he cannot make it differ- 
ent from its nature or essence. Nothing can be without a 
nature, and the natures or essences of all things are immut- 
able. This, however, is not to say that things are indepen- 
dent of God ; but they depend upon — or participate in — his 
eternal and immutable wisdom, and not upon his mere will. ■ 
In this work the author covers a good deal of ground which 
he had already traversed, but he goes on to explore anew the 
nature of knowledge as "an inward and active energy of the 
mind itself." His fundamental position is that "the in- 
telligible forms by which things are understood or known are 
not stamps or impressions passively printed upon the soul 
from without, but ideas vitally protended or actively exerted 
from within itself." Thus knowledge is not reminiscence of 

1 Eternal and Immutable Morality, book 1, ch. iii., § 7. 



Innate Ideas 93 

something known before birth, but it does involve "antici- 
pations" of experience. The power of knowing or intellec- 
tion is not received from the senses, and it implies an object 
of intellect. Whereas the objects of sense are particular 
corporeal things, the objects of intellection are the intelligible 
"rationes" or reasons of things, and are themselves nothing 
else than modifications of the knowing mind. Such are 
concepts like justice, duty, truth, cause, etc.; such also are 
certain propositions, for example, "nothing can be and not 
be at the same time. ' ' Of these things no image or phantasm 
can be formed ; they cannot be derived from sense-perception. 
It is different with the general ideas of natural objects (e.g., 
1 ' rose "). They contain elements both of understanding and 
of sense: "there is a complication of something noematical 
and something phantasmatical together." 

Of innate ideas some are non-relative, as wisdom, know- 
ledge, truth, etc. ; others relative, as cause, effect, means, end, 
order, etc., involving the comparing activity of mind. 
Neither sort is derived from sense, though sense may be ' ' the 
outward occasion by which they are excited." Although 
modifications of intellect, they are not mere " entia rationis" 
or subjective (in the modern meaning of the term), and this 
for two reasons : in the first place because a mode of intellect 
is a mode of something which is real and has more "entity" 
in it than matter or body; and, in the second place, because 
they are valid for things without us. Thus art and wisdom, 
for example, beget real and important effects in nature and 
human life ; and relations are "ingredients " in the true nature 
or essence of things whether natural or artificial. Hence also 
it follows that the idea of a composite thing cannot be pas- 
sively stamped upon the mind but is ' ' comprehended only by 
the large unitive power of the intellect": it requires, as we 
may put it, using Kantian language, a synthetic act of the 
understanding. 

In some parts of his discussion Cud worth comes very 
near modern theories, for example, the distinction of per- 
ceptual and conceptual space. Sense, he points out (as does 



94 The Cambridge Platonists 

More also), does not present us with exact straight lines or 
circles. The visible appearances can only have been the 
occasions which induced the mind actively to form the accur- 
ate and precise "intelligible ideas" of straight line or circle. 
He comes also upon the analogy of sense-perception to a 
"divine language," which was afterwards developed by 
Berkeley. ' ' Nature, ' ' he says, ' ' doth as it were talk with us 
in the outward objects of sense"; and "the soul, as by a 
certain secret instinct, . . . understanding nature's lan- 
guage, . . . perceives and takes cognisance of many other 
things." 

"Knowledge, " he says again, "doth not begin in individ- 
uals but end in them. . . . And if we know as God knows, 
then do we know or gain knowledge by universals." Only 
the intelligible natures or essences of things are objects of 
certain knowledge. Considered formally, they exist only in 
the mind, but yet they have an immutable nature of their 
own. Were all finite things and minds annihilated, mathe- 
matical and other verities would remain — in the mind of 
God. An infinite mind therefore necessarily exists, which 
1 ' always actually comprehendeth himself, the essences of all 
things, and their verities; or rather, which is the rationes, 
essences, and verities of all things." 

But for Cudworth, as for Descartes, the question arises 
how we are to distinguish truth from error ; and their answers 
are similar. The immediate objects of intellection exist in 
the mind itself. We may not measure them by external 
things; we cannot consult their archetypes in the eternal 
divine intellect; the criterion of true knowledge is clear in- 
telligibility. "Whatever is clearly conceived is an entity 
and a truth." But for Cudworth, unlike Descartes, error 
arises not from bias of will but from obscurity or confusion: 
falsehood is a non-entity and therefore cannot be clearly 
conceived, for "omnipotence itself cannot make a non-entity 
to be an entity." 

The result applies to the first principles of morality. 
Moral good and evil, justice and injustice, signify a reality, 



John Smith 95 

either absolute or relative, in the things so denominated; 
they have natures which cannot be altered by will or opinion. 
And these moral principles exist in the infinite eternal mind, 
''whose nature is the first rule and exemplar of morality." 
With this conclusion Cud worth has established the "eternal 
and immutable ' ' nature of morality ; into its detailed applica- 
tions he does not enter at all. 

John Smith, perhaps the most attractive figure of the 
Cambridge group, was born in 161 8 and died in 1652. He 
was the son of a small farmer in Northamptonshire, entered 
Emmanuel College in 1636, and became a fellow of Queens' 
College in 1644. He was a scholar ("a living library, " it was 
said) and an independent thinker, and he had also the 
teacher's gifts of sympathy and utterance: "no less happy in 
expressing his mind than in conceiving. ' ' His short and busy 
life did not give him time for composing a philosophical 
treatise ; and all that survives of his work is a volume of Dis- 
courses, published in 1660. "Calmly and closely reasoned, 
they are at the same time inspired" is Tulloch's judgment 
upon them. 1 The discourses are ten in number, and their 
chief topics, in a philosophical regard, are "the true way or 
method of attaining to divine knowledge, " "the immortality 
of the soul," "the existence and nature of God," and "the 
excellency and nobleness of true religion." They are re- 
markable discourses to have been preached in a college chapel 
at any time, but especially in the middle of the seventeenth 
century. Smith illustrates the Christian life and Christian 
doctrine by means of the ideas of Plato, Plotinus, and Pro- 
clus. His pages are full of quotations from these masters. 
He is so distinctly and even controversially Platonic that 
he warns his hearers against Aristotle, who "defaced the 
sacred monuments of the ancient metaphysical theology," 
and against Aristotle's "late interpreters," who "are 
as little sometime acquainted with his meaning and de- 

1 Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth 
Century, 2d ed., ii., p. 135. 



96 The Cambridge Platonists 

sign as they are with that elder philosophy which he so 
corrupts." 

Smith was a Christian Platonist, and among the finest 
examples of the type. It is not chiefly the doctrine of ideas 
that attracts him, but rather the spiritual interpretation of 
life and reality as a whole, which he finds both in Plato and 
in Plotinus. And the thought is more simply expressed 
by him than by More or Cudworth. His quotations are 
certainly numerous, but they always illustrate his own 
thought. And his tone must have sounded strange — even 
if attractive — to hearers nurtured on the prevailing theology 
of the day. " Salvation, " he said, "is nothing else but 
a true participation of the divine nature. Heaven is not a 
thing without us, nor is happiness anything distinct from a 
true conjunction of the mind with God in a secret feeling of 
his goodness and reciprocation of affection to him." God is 
to be sought within a man's own soul ; and a good life is "the 
prolepsis and fundamental principle of man's soul." Smith 
is far from holding the doctrine of the utter depravity of 
man. The radical principles of knowledge may be dark- 
ened, but they cannot easily be obliterated. And knowledge 
may pass from discourse into an immediacy like that of 
sense : "that which before was only faith well built upon sure 
principles (for such our science may be) now becomes vision." 

The discourse on Immortality contains his most complete 
argument. It proceeds from the postulate "that no sub- 
stantial and indivisible thing ever perisheth, " and then goes 
on, in the first place, to distinguish soul from body. Our 
notion of body never reaches the clearness of our notion of 
mind as "something within us that thinks, apprehends, 
reasons, and discourses." All the operations of mind bring 
out its nature as distinct from body. Smith (after Proclus) 
enumerates four degrees of knowledge through which the 
distinction is made increasingly clear. First comes the naked 
perception of sensible impressions, without any reason; then 
the knowledge of opinion, in which impressions are collated 
with our more obscure ideas; thirdly, discourse or reason, as 



Nathanael Culverwel 97 

exemplified in mathematics; and, beyond these, a fourth 
kind of knowledge — the " naked intuition of eternal truth 
which is always the same, which never rises nor sets, but 
always stands still in its vertical, and fills the whole hori- 
zon of the soul with a mild and gentle light," thus giving 
evidence of "some permanent and stable essence in the 
soul of man." The soul partakes "of time in its broken 
and particular conceptions and apprehensions, and of 
eternity in its comprehensive and stable contemplations." 
Once on the top of this high Olympus, the soul will no 
longer "doubt whether any drowsy sleep shall hereafter 
seize upon it," but will grasp "fast and safely its own 
immortality and view itself in the horizon of eternity." 
Thus, in the scale of knowledge, each degree corrects 
that below it and leads to a higher apprehension till, in 
the consciousness of eternal truth, the soul cannot doubt its 
own eternity. 

Of Nathanael Culverwel personally little is known. Even 
the dates of his birth and death are uncertain. He entered 
Emmanuel College in 1633, the year after Whichcote became 
tutor, being thus a year junior to Cudworth and three years 
senior to John Smith. His Discourse of the Light of Nature 
was published posthumously in 1652, and he is said to have 
died either one or two years previously. Although bred in 
the very temple of the new school of thought, he did not 
altogether share its creed. He can scarcely be described as a 
Platonist. Unlike More, he would not come to terms with 
the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls, and he even re- 
jected the theory of ideas. The mysticism of Lord Brooke 
was also alien to him ; he had no sympathy with the union of 
contradictories ; and he quotes with approval the criticism of 
Brooke published, in 1643, by John Wallis, under the title 
Truth tried. Nor can Culverwel be described as a "latitude 
man." He remained constant to Calvinism and, on the 
whole, to the puritan spirit. But he was far removed from 
the extremists of his party, of whom he writes that "if you 



98 The Cambridge Platonists 

do but offer to make a syllogism L they will straightway cry 
it down for carnal learning." "The Church, " he said, "hath 
more security in resting upon genuine reason than in relying 
upon some spurious traditions." The purpose of his book is 
to show the true relation between faith and reason: "to give 
faith her full scope and latitude, and to give reason also her 
just bounds and limits. This," he says, "is the first-born, 
but the other has the blessing." Two propositions sum up 
his doctrine: "(i) That all the moral law is founded in 
natural and common light, in the light of reason; and (2) 
That there is nothing in the mysteries of the gospel contrary 
to the light of reason." The law of nature belongs to reason, 
not to sense, and is essential to a rational creature. The 
voice of reason promulgates the law ; but its obligation and 
binding virtue rest "partly in the excellency and equity of 
the commands themselves ; but they principally depend upon 
the sovereignty and authority of God himself, thus contriv- 
ing and commanding the welfare of His creature, and ad- 
vancing a rational nature to the just perfection of its being.'' 
As Aquinas holds, the law of nature is a copy of the eternal 
law, and "this eternal law is not really distinguished from 
God himself." This view of the laws of nature was not al- 
together new, even in English. Hooker had already given 
classical expression to a doctrine essentially the same and 
drawn from similar sources. But no one had a clearer view 
than Culverwel of the essence of the doctrine. He never 
inclines to the theory that all knowledge arises out of sensa- 
tion, and yet he never lapses into mysticism. His theory is a 
pure and elevated rationalism, though he holds that our 
reason needs illumination from the fuller light of faith. 
His style is worthy of the subject, if perhaps too full of 
learned references and occasionally oratorical; and it is 
hardly too much to say of the book that "it is almost 
a poem in its grandeur and harmony of conception, and 
the lyrical enthusiasm with which it chants the praise of 
reason." 1 

1 Tulloch. Rational Theology, ii., p. 411. 



Joseph Glanvill 99 

Joseph Glanvill was intimately associated with some 
members of the Cambridge school — in particular, with 
Henry More — but he was himself educated at Oxford, and 
he was not a Platonist. He had, however, many points 
of sympathy with them. He was attracted by the new 
philosophy of Descartes — he calls it the "best philosophy " — 
whereas he had nothing but criticism for the Aristotelianism 
that still ruled the schools of Oxford. He was in sympathy 
also with the broad and reasonable tone that distinguished 
the theology of the Cambridge Platonists from the prevailing 
attitude of the puritan divines. Glanvill 's mind was sensi- 
tive to all the influences of the time: the new science, the 
human culture, the contending doctrines in philosophy and 
theology. The result was a distrust of all dogmatic systems, 
combined with a certain openness of mind — a readiness to 
receive light from any quarter. His first and most famous 
book was The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661), and a revised 
edition of the same was published in 1665 with a title Scepsis 
scientifica: or Confest Ignorance the way to Science. This was 
dedicated to the Royal Society, of which he had become a 
fellow in 1664. 

In philosophy Glanvill professed himself a seeker. He 
discoursed on the defects in our knowledge even of the 
things nearest to us, such as the nature of the soul and the 
body: he held that reason is swayed by the emotions, so 
that "most of the contests of the litigious world pretending 
for truth are but the bandyings of one man's affections 
against another's." His chief censures were for the dogmas 
of the Aristotelians, and this involved him in controversy 
with "the learned Mr. Thomas White," a priest of Douay, 
collaborator with Sir Kenelm Digby and a voluminous 
author, who answered The Vanity of Dogmatizing in a Latin 
treatise entitled Siri, sive sceptices et scepticorum a jure dis- 
putationis exclusio. It is in his reply to this writer that Glan- 
vill defines his scepticism as a "way of enquiry, which is not 
to continue still poring upon the writings and opinions of 
philosophers, but to seek truth in the great book of nature." 



ioo The Cambridge Platonists 

The Royal Society, realising Bacon's prophetic scheme of 
Solomon's House, had adopted this method, and had done 
more for the improvement of useful knowledge "than all the 
philosophers of the notional way since Aristotle opened his 
shop in Greece." Glanvill himself ventured upon a "con- 
tinuation of the New Atlantis" in his essay Antifanatick 
Theologie, and Free Philosophy. His openness of mind and 
his conviction that authority and sense are our only evidence 
on such matters led to his belief in supernatural appearances. 
He thought that "the testimony of all ages " established their 
reality. And he distrusted the dogmatism of what he 
called "modern Sadducism": to him, it was a "matter 
of astonishment that men, otherwise witty and ingenious, 
are fallen into the conceit that there's no such thing as a 
witch or apparition." 

Other writers of the period showed the influence of the 
new ideas. From the scholastic point of view, Samuel 
Parker, bishop of Oxford, criticised both Hobbes and Des- 
cartes, a treatise on Cartesianism having been published in 
England in 1675 by Antoine Legrand, of Douay, a Francis- 
can friar and member of the English mission. In his Court 
of the Gentiles (1669-77), Theophilus Gale traced all ancient 
learning and philosophy to the Hebrew Scriptures. John 
Pordage wrote a number of works, the mysticism of which 
was inspired by Jacob Boehme. 

The treatise De le gibus naturae, published in 1672, by 
Richard Cumberland, afterwards bishop of Peterborough, 
is much more than a criticism of Hobbes. It puts forward 
a doctrine of morality which is based upon the law of nature, 
and this is accompanied by a running criticism of Hobbes's 
views. Cumberland looks upon the law of nature as capable 
of being inferred from observation of physical and mental 
phenomena (themselves due to the will of God), and at the 
same time as pointing out "that possible action of a rational 
agent which will chiefly promote the common good." 



Richard Cumberland 101 

"Good" is defined by him as "that which preserves, or en- 
enlarges and perfects the faculties of any one thing or of 
several," but he also uses the term as equivalent to happiness. 
And he thinks that the "rules of life" are as plain as the 
"art of numbering," the following propositions being laid 
down as necessarily true: (i) "that the good of all rational 
beings is greater than the like good of any part of that 
aggregate body, that is, that it is truly the greatest good"; 
(2) "that in promoting the good of this whole aggregate, the 
good of individuals is contained and promoted"; and (3) 
"that the good of every particular part requires the intro- 
ducing and settling of distinct property in such things, and 
such services of rational agents, as contribute to the common 
happiness. " The work as a whole is heavy in style, weak in 
its philosophical analysis, and confused in argument. But 
its insistence on the social nature of man, and its doctrine 
of the common good as the supreme principle of morality, 
anticipate the direction taken by much of the ethical thought 
of the following century. 






CHAPTER VI 
John Locke 

JOHN LOCKE may be regarded as, on the whole, the 
most important figure in English philosophy. Others 
excelled him in genius ; he had not the comprehensive 
grasp of Hobbes, or the speculative originality of Berkeley, or 
the subtlety of Hume; but he was surpassed by none in 
candour, sagacity, and shrewdness. These qualities recom- 
mended him to his countrymen, and the width of his interests 
reconciled them to his philosophy. He was a physician, 
always on the outlook for new knowledge, an adviser of 
statesmen, a sufferer in the cause of freedom, and an amateur 
theologian. His writings on economics, on politics, and on 
religion expressed the best ideas of the time — the ideas that 
were about to become dominant. He was the philosopher 
of the Revolution settlement ; and, when the settlement was 
made, he came home to publish the books which he had 
prepared in exile. Even his great work, A n Essay concerning 
Human Understanding, may have seemed only to show the 
grounds in the human mind for the lessons of honesty, liberty, 
and toleration which he constantly inculcated. It is almost 
with a shock of surprise that one realises that this same 
Essay, by its "historical plain method," gave a new direction 
to European philosophy and provided a new basis for the 
science of psychology. 

Locke was born at Wrington, a village in Somerset, 
on 29 August, 1632. He was the son of a country solicitor 

102 



Life and Studies 103 

and small landowner who, when the civil war broke out, 
served as a captain of horse in the parliamentary army. " I 
no sooner perceived myself in the world than I found myself 
in a storm," he wrote long afterwards, during the lull in the 
storm which followed the king's return. But political unrest 
does not seem to have seriously disturbed the course of his 
education. He entered Westminster school in 1646, and 
passed to Christ Church, Oxford, as a junior student, in 1652 ; 
and he had a home there (though absent from it for long 
periods) for more than thirty years — till deprived of his 
studentship by royal mandate in 1684. The official studies 
of the university were uncongenial to him; he would have 
preferred to have learned philosophy from Descartes instead 
of from Aristotle ; but evidently he satisfied the authorities, 
for he was elected to a senior studentship in 1659, and, in 
the three or four years following, he took part in the tutorial 
work of the college. At one time he seems to have thought 
of the clerical profession as a possible career; but he declined 
an offer of preferment in 1666, and in the same year obtained 
a dispensation which enabled him to hold his studentship 
without taking orders. About the same time we hear of his 
interest in experimental science, and he was elected a fellow 
of the Royal Society in 1668. Little is known of his early 
medical studies. He cannot have followed the regular course 
for he was unable to obtain the degree of doctor of medicine. 
It was not till 1674 that he graduated as bachelor of medicine. 
In the following January his position in Christ Church was 
regularised by his appointment to one of the two medical 
studentships of the college. 

His knowledge of medicine and occasional practice of 
the art led, in 1666, to an acquaintance with Lord Ashley 
(afterwards, from 1672, Earl of Shaftesbury). The acquain- 
tance, begun accidentally, had an immediate effect on 
Locke's career. Without severing his connection with 
Oxford, he became a member of Shaftesbury's household 
and seems soon to have been looked upon as indispensable 
in all matters domestic and political. He saved the states- 



104 John Locke 

man's life by a skilful operation, arranged a suitable marriage 
for his heir, attended the lady in her confinement, and di- 
rected the nursing and education of her son — afterwards 
famous as the author of Chracteristics. He assisted Shaftes- 
bury also in public business, commercial and political, and 
followed him into the government service. When Shaftes- 
bury was made lord chancellor in 1672, Locke became his 
secretary for presentations to benefices, and, in the following 
year, was made secretary to the board of trade. In 1675 
his official life came to an end for the time with the fall of 
his chief. 

Locke's health, always delicate, suffered from the London 
climate. When released from the cares of office, he left 
England in search of health. Ten years earlier he had had 
his first experience of foreign travel and of public employ- 
ment, as secretary to Sir Walter Vane, ambassador to the 
Elector of Brandenburg during the first Dutch war. On his 
return to England, early in 1666, he declined an offer of fur- 
ther service in Spain, and settled again in Oxford, but was 
soon induced by Shaftesbury to spend a great part of his 
time in London. On his release from office in 1675 he sought 
milder air in the south of France, made leisurely journeys, 
and settled down for many months at Montpellier. The 
journal which he kept at this period is full of minute descrip- 
tions of places and customs and institutions. It contains 
also a record of many of the reflections that afterwards took 
shape in the Essay concerning Human Understanding. He 
returned to England in 1679, when his patron had again a 
short spell of office. He does not seem to have been con- 
cerned in Shaftesbury's later schemes; but suspicion natur- 
ally fell upon him, and he found it prudent to take refuge in 
Holland. This he did in August, 1683, less than a year after 
the flight and death of Shaftesbury. Even in Holland for 
some time he was not safe from danger of arrest at the 
instance of the English government ; he moved from town to 
town, lived under an assumed name, and visited his friends 
by stealth. His residence in Holland brought political 



Life and Writings 105 

occupations with it, among the men who were preparing the 
English revolution. It had at least equal value in the leisure 
which it gave him for literary work and in the friendships 
which it offered. In particular, he formed a close intimacy 
with Philip van Limborch, the leader of the Remonstrant 
clergy, and the scholar and liberal theologian to whom 
Epistola de Tolerantia was dedicated. This letter was com- 
pleted in 1685, though not published at the time; and, before 
he left for England, in February, 1689, the Essay concerning 
Human Understanding seems to have attained its final 
form, and an abstract of it was published in Leclerc's Biblio- 
theque universale in 1688. 

The new government recognised his services to the cause 
of freedom by the offer of the post of ambassador either at 
Berlin or at Vienna. But Locke was no place hunter ; he was 
solicitous also on account of his health ; his earlier experience 
of Germany led him to fear the ' 'cold air " and "warm drink- 
ing"; and the high office was declined. But he served less 
important offices at home. He was made commissioner of 
appeals in May, 1689, and, from 1696 to 1700, he was a 
commissioner of trade and plantations at a salary of £1000 a 
year. Although official duties called him to town for pro- 
tracted periods, he was able to fix his residence in the country. 
In 1 69 1 he was persuaded to make his permanent home 
at Oates in Essex, in the house of Sir Francis and Lady 
Masham. Lady Masham was a daughter of Cudworth, the 
Cambridge Platonist; Locke had manifested a growing 
sympathy with his type of liberal theology; intellectual 
affinity increased his friendship with the family at Oates ; and 
he continued to live with them till his death on 28 October, 
1704. 

With the exception of the abstract of the Essay and other 
less important contributions to the Bibliotheque universelle, 
Locke had not published anything before his return to 
England in 1689 ; and by this time he was in his fifty-seventh 
year. But many years of reflection and preparation made 
him ready now to send forth books from the press in rapid 



106 John Locke 

succession. In March, 1689, his Epistola de Tolerantia was 
published in Holland; an English translation of the same, 
by William Popple, appeared later in the same year, and in 
a corrected edition in 1690. The controversy which followed 
this work led, on Locke's part, to the publication of a Second 
Letter, and then of a Third Letter, in 1690 and 1692 respect- 
ively. In February, 1690, the book entitled Two Treatises of 
Government was published, and in March of the same year 
appeared the long expected Essay concerning Human Under- 
standing, on which he had been at work intermittently since 
1 67 1. It met with immediate success, and led to a volumi- 
nous literature of attack and reply ; young fellows of colleges 
tired to introduce it at the universities, and heads of houses 
sat in conclave to devise means for its suppression. To one 
of his critics Locke replied at length. This was Edward 
Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, who, in his Vindication of 
the Doctrine of the Trinity (1696), had attacked the new 
philosophy. It was the theological consequences which were 
drawn from the doctrines of the Essay, not so much by Locke 
himself as by Toland, in his Christianity not Mysterious, that 
the bishop had chiefly in view; in philosophy for its own sake 
he does not seem to have been interested. But his criticism 
drew attention to one of the least satisfactory (if also one 
of the most suggestive) doctrines of the Essay — its explana- 
tion of the idea of substance; and discredit was thrown on 
the ' ' new way of ideas ' ' in general. In January, 1 697, Locke 
replied in A Letter to the Bishop of Worcester. Stillingfleet 
answered this in May; and Locke was ready with a second 
letter in August. Stillingfleet replied in 1698, and Locke's 
lengthy third letter appeared in 1699. The bishop's death, 
later in the same year, put an end to the controversy. The 
second edition of the Essay was published in 1694, the third 
in 1695, and the fourth in 1700. The second and fourth 
editions contained important additions. An abridgment of 
it appeared in 1696, by John Wynne, fellow of Jesus College, 
Oxford; it was translated into Latin and into French soon 
after the appearance of the fourth edition. The later edi- 



Life and Writings 107 

tions contain many modifications due to the author's corre- 
spondence with William Molyneux, of Trinity College, Dublin, 
a devoted disciple, for whom Locke conceived a warm 
friendship. Other correspondents and visitors to Oates 
during these years were Sir Isaac Newton and Anthony 
Collins, a young squire of the neighbourhood, who afterwards 
made his mark in the intellectual controversies of the time. 

Other interests also occupied Locke during the years 
following the publication of his great work. The financial 
difficulties of the new government led in 1691 to his publi- 
cation of Some Considerations of the Consequences of the 
Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money, and of 
Further Considerations on the latter question, four years later. 
In 1693 he published Some Thoughts concerning Education, a 
work founded on letters written to a friend, and in 1695 
appeared The Reasonableness of Christianity, and later A 
Vindication of the same against certain objections ; and this 
was followed by a second vindication two years afterwards. 
Locke's religious interest had always been strongly marked, 
and, in the later years of his life, much of his time was given 
to theology. Among the writings of his which were published 
after his death are commentaries on the Pauline epistles, and 
a Discourse on Miracles, as well as a fragment of a Fourth 
Letter for Toleration. The posthumously published writings 
include further An Examination of Father Malebranche's 
Opinion of Seeing all things in God, Remarks on Some of Mr. 
N orris's Books, and — most important of all — the small trea- 
tise on The Conduct of the Understanding, which had been 
originally designed as a chapter of the Essay. 

Locke opened a new way for English philosophy. Still- 
ingfleet saw dangers ahead in that way ; but its discovery was 
Locke's title to fame. It was no new thing, certainly, to lay 
stress upon method. Herein he followed the example of 
Bacon and Hobbes and other pioneers of modern philosophy. 
Bacon had done more : he had found dangers and defects in 
the natural working of men's minds, and had devised 
means to correct them. But Locke went a step further, 



108 John Locke 

and undertook a systematic investigation of the human 
understanding with a view to determining something else — 
namely, the truth and certainty of knowledge, and the 
grounds of belief, on all matters about which men are in the 
habit of making assertions. In this way he introduced a new 
department, or a new method, of philosophical enquiry, 
which has come to be known as theory of knowledge or 
epistemology ; and, in this respect, he was the precursor of 
Kant and anticipated what Kant called the critical method. 

We have Locke's own account of the origin of the problem 
in his mind. He struck out a new way because he found the 
old paths blocked. Five or six friends were conversing in his 
room, probably in London and in the winter of 1 670-1, "on a 
subject very remote from this " ; the subject, as we learn from 
another member of the party, was the "principles of morality 
and revealed religion"; but difficulties arose on every side, 
and no progress was made. Then, he goes on to say, "it 
came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that 
before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was 
necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects 
our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with." 
At the request of his friends, Locke agreed to set down his 
thoughts on this question against their next meeting; and 
he expected that a single sheet of paper would suffice for the 
purpose. So little did he realise the magnitude of the 
issues which he raised and which were to occupy his leisure 
for nearly twenty years. 

Locke's interest centres in the traditional problems — 
the nature of self, the world, and God, and the grounds of our 
knowledge of them. We reach these questions only in the 
fourth and last book of the Essay. But to them the enquiry 
of the first three books is preliminary, though it has, and 
Locke saw that it had, an importance of its own. His 
introductory sentences make this plain: "Since it is the 
understanding that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, 
and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has 
over them; it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, 



The Problem of the Essay 109 

worth our labour to inquire into. The understanding, like 
the eye, while it makes us see and perceive all other things, 
takes no notice of itself ; and it requires art and pains to set it 
at a distance and make it its own object. But whatever be 
the difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry ; whatever 
it be that keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves ; sure I am 
that all the light we can let in upon our minds, all the ac- 
quaintance we can make with our own understandings, will 
not only be very pleasant, but bring us great advantage, in 
directing our thoughts in the search of other things." 

Locke will not "meddle with the physical consideration 
of the mind"; he has no theory about its essence or its 
relation to the body; at the same time, he has no doubt 
that, if due pains be taken, the understanding can be studied 
like anything else : we can observe its objects and the ways in 
which it operates upon them. All the objects of the under- 
standing are described as ideas, and ideas are spoken of as 
being in the mind. 1 Locke's first problem, therefore, is to 
trace the origin and history of ideas, and the ways in which 
the understanding operates upon them, in order that he may 
be able to see what knowledge is and how far it reaches. 
This wide use of the term "idea " is inherited from Descartes. 
The term in modern psychology which corresponds with 
it most nearly is "presentation." But presentation is, 
strictly, only one variety of Locke's idea, which includes also 
representation and image, percept, and concept or notion. 
His usage of the term thus differs so widely from the old 
Platonic meaning that the danger of confusion between them 
is not great. It suited the author's purpose also from being 
a familiar word in ordinary discourse as well as in the lan- 
guage of philosophers. Herein, however, lay a danger from 
which he did not escape. In common usage "idea" carries 
with it a suggestion of contrast with reality ; and the opposi- 
tion which the "new way of ideas" excited was due to the 
doubt which it seemed to cast on the claim of knowledge 
to be a knowledge of real things. 

1 Cp. Essay, introduction, § 2; book 11, ch. i., § 5; book 11, ch. viii., § 8. 



no John Locke 

The Essay is divided into four books ; the first is a polemic 
against the doctrine of innate principles and ideas; the 
others deal with ideas, with words, and with knowledge 
respectively. The first book is remarkable for the way in 
which the author brings to bear upon the question all the 
facts that could then be ascertained regarding the ideas and 
beliefs of primitive and savage races. He points to the 
variety of human experience, and to the difficulty of forming 
general and abstract ideas, and he ridicules the view that 
any such ideas can be antecedent to experience. It is in its 
most extreme form that the doctrine of innate ideas is 
attacked; but he cannot see any alternative between that 
form and his own view that all ideas have their origin in 
experience. 

Locke wishes to avoid any presupposition about matter, 
or mind, or their relation. It is not difficult to see that the 
notions which he has expelled often re-enter unbidden. 
But the peculiar value of his psychology consists in his 
attempt to keep clear of them. He begins neither with 
mind nor with matter, but with ideas. Their existence needs 
no proof: "everyone is conscious of them in himself, and 
men's words and actions will satisfy him that they are in 
others." His first enquiry is "how they come into the 
mind"; his next business is to show that they constitute 
the whole material of our knowledge. In his answer to the 
former question we discover the influence of traditional 
philosophy, or rather of ordinary commonsense views of 
existence, upon his thought. All our ideas, he says, come 
from experience. The mind has no innate ideas, but it has 
innate faculties: it perceives, remembers, and combines the 
ideas that come to it from without ; it also desires, deliberates, 
and wills; and these mental activities are themselves the 
source of a new class of ideas. Experience is therefore two- 
fold. Our observation may be employed either about exter- 
nal sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our 
minds. The former is the source of most of the ideas which 
we have, and, as it depends "wholly upon our senses," is 



Sensation and Reflection in 

called "sensation." The latter is a source of ideas which 
"every man has wholly in himself," and it might be called 
"internal sense " ; to it he gives the name "reflection." 

Hence the peculiarity of Locke's position. There are 
no innate ideas "stamped upon the mind" from birth; and 
yet impressions of sense are not the only source of knowledge : 
"the mind," he says, 1 "furnishes the understanding with 
ideas." No distinction is implied here between "mind" 
and "understanding," so that the sentence might run, 
"the mind furnishes itself with ideas." As to what these 
ideas are, we are not left in doubt : they are "ideas of its own 
operations." When the mind acts, it has an idea of its 
action, that is, it is self-conscious. Reflection, therefore, 
means self -consciousness, and, as such, is assumed to be an 
original source of our knowledge. Afterwards both Hume 
and Condillac refused to admit reflection as an original source 
of ideas, and both, accordingly, found that they had to face 
the problem of tracing the growth of self -consciousness out 
of a succession of sensations. According to Locke, reflection 
is an original, rather than an independent, source of ideas. 
Without sensation, mind would have nothing to operate upon, 
and therefore could have no ideas of its operations. It is 
"when he first has any sensation" that "a man begins 
to have any ideas." 2 The operations of the mind are not 
themselves produced by sensation, but sensation is required 
to give the mind material for working on. 

The ideas which sensation gives "enter by the senses 
simple and unmixed" 3 ; they stand in need of the activitity 
of mind to bind them into the complex unities required 
for knowledge. The complex ideas of substances, modes, 
and relations are all the product of the combining and 
abstracting activity of mind operating upon simple ideas, 
which have been given, without any connection, by sensation 
or reflection. Locke's doctrine of knowledge has thus two 
sides. On the one side, all the material of knowledge is 
traced to the simple idea. On the other side, the processes 

1 II, i-, 5- a li, i.,23. 3.n f ii. t i. 



ii2 John Locke 

which transform this crude material into knowledge are 
activities of mind which themselves cannot be reduced 
to ideas. Locke's metaphors of the tabula rasa, "white 
paper," * and "dark room " misled his critics and suggested to 
some of his followers a theory very different from his own. 
The metaphors only illustrate what he had in hand at the 
moment. Without experience, no characters are written 
on the ' ' tablets ' ' of the mind ; except through the ' ' windows ' ' 
of sensation and reflection, no light enters the understanding. 
No ideas are innate; and there is no source of new simple 
ideas other than those two. But knowledge involves 
relations, and relations are the work of the mind ; it requires 
complex ideas, and complex ideas are mental formations. 
Simple ideas do not, of themselves, enter into relation and 
form complex ideas. Locke does not, like Hobbes before 
him and Hume and Condillac after him, look to some un- 
explained natural attraction of idea for idea as bringing about 
these formations. Indeed, his treatment of "the association 
of ideas " is an afterthought, and did not appear in the earlier 
editions of the Essay. 

Starting from the simple ideas which we get from sen- 
sation, or from observing mental operations as they take 
place, Locke has two things to explain : the universal element, 
that is, the general conceptions with which knowledge is con- 
cerned or which it implies ; and the reference to reality which 
it claims. With the former problem Locke deals at great 
length; and the general method of his exposition is clear 
enough. Complex ideas arise from simple ideas by the 
processes of combination and abstraction carried out by the 
mind. It would be unfair to expect completeness from his 
enterprise ; but it cannot be denied that his intricate and sub- 
tle discussions left many problems unsolved. Indeed, this 
is one of his great merits. He raised questions in such a way 
as to provoke further enquiry. Principles such as the casual 

1 The same metaphor was used by Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, book I, 
ch. vi. : " The soul of man being therefore at the first as a book, wherein nothing 
is, and yet all things may be imprinted." 



The Universal in Knowledge 113 

relation, apart from which knowledge of nature would be 
impossible, are quietly taken for granted, often without any 
enquiry into the grounds for assuming them. Further, the 
difficulty of accounting for universals is unduly simplified 
by describing certain products as simple ideas, although 
thought has obviously been at work upon them. 

In this connection an important inconsistency becomes 
apparent in his account of the primary data of experience. 
It is, indeed, impossible even to name the mere particular — 
the "this, here, and now" of sense — without giving it a 
flavour of generality. But, at the outset, Locke tries to get 
as near it as possible. Simple ideas (of sensation) are 
exemplified by yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, and so 
forth. 1 But, towards the end of the second book, 2 a very 
different list is given : extension, solidity, and mobility (from 
sensation); perceptivity and motivity (from reflection); 
and existence, duration, and number (from both sensation 
and reflection). These are said to be "our original ideas,' ' 
and the rest to be "derived" from or to "depend" on them. 
It is difficult to compare the two lists, instance by instance ; 
but one example may be taken. According to the first list, 
hard is a simple idea ; according to the second list, solidity is 
the original (and therefore simple) idea, and hard will be 
derived from it and depend on it. It is clear that, in making 
the former list, Locke was trying to get back to the primary 
data of our individual experience ; whereas, in the second list, 
he is rather thinking of the objective reality on which our 
experience depends and which, he assumes, it reveals. But 
he does not observe the difference. He seems to forget his 
view that the original of all knowledge is to be found in the 
particular, in something "simple and unmixed." Thus he 
says 3 without hesitation, "If any one asks me, what this solid- 
ity is, I send him to his senses to inform him. Let him put 
a flint or a football between his hands, and then endeavour 
to join them, and he will know." But he will not know 
without going a long way beyond the simple idea. The 
2 n, i., 3. a n, xxi., 75. 3n, iv., 4. 



ii4 John Locke 

simple ideas in the case are certain muscular and tactual 
sensations; and he interprets these by other means (includ- 
ing knowledge of external objects and his own organism) 
when he says that the flint or the football is solid. 

His doctrine of modes is also affected by this same ob- 
livion of the fact that a simple idea must be really simple. 
Thus he holds that "space or extension" is a simple idea 
given both by sight and by touch. 1 One would expect, 
therefore, that the original and simple idea of space would 
be the particular patch seen at any moment or the particular 
"feel" of the exploring limb. But we are told that "each 
idea of any different distance, or space, is a simple mode" 
of the idea of space. 2 Here again the simple idea is unwit- 
tingly generalised. He professes to begin with the mere 
particulars of external and internal sense, and to show 
how knowledge — which is necessarily general — is evolved 
from them. But, in doing so, he assumes a general or univer- 
sal element as already given in the simple idea. 

Having gone so far, he might almost have been expected 
to take a further step and treat the perceptions of particular 
things as modes of the simple idea substance. But this he 
does not do. Substance is an idea regarding which he was in 
earnest with his own fundamental theory (although per- 
plexed about the origin of the idea of "substance in general" 
as well as of the ideas of "particular sorts of substances" 3 ) ; 
and the difficulties in which his theory involved him on this 
head were both provocative of criticism and fruitful for the 
progress of thought. He admits that substance is a complex 
idea ; that is to say, it is formed by the mind's action out of 
simple ideas. Now, this idea of substance marks the 
difference between having sensations and perceiving things. 
Its importance, therefore, is clear; but there is no clearness 
in explaining it. We are told that there is a "supposed or 
confused idea of substance" to which are joined (say) "the 
simple idea of a dull whitish colour, with certain degrees of 
weight, hardness, ductility and fusibility," and, as a result, 

1 ii, v. a II, xiii., 4. J Cp. 11, xxiii., 1-3. 



The Idea of Substance 115 

"we have the idea of lead." A difficulty might have been 
avoided if substance could have been interpreted as simply 
the combination by the understanding of white, hard, etc., 
or some similar cluster of ideas of sensation. But it was not 
Locke's way thus to ignore facts. He sees that something 
more is needed than these ideas of sensation. They are only 
joined to "the supposed or confused idea of substance," which 
is there and "always the first and chief." 1 He holds to it 
that the idea is a complex idea and so made by the mind; 
but he is entirely at a loss to account for the materials out 
of which it is made. We cannot imagine how simple ideas 
can subsist by themselves, and so "we accustom ourselves 
to suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist," and 
this we call substance. In one place, he even vacillates 
between the assertions that we have no clear idea of sub- 
stance and that we have no idea of it at all. 2 It is "a sup- 
position of he knows not what." This uncertainty, as will 
appear presently, throws its shadow over our whole knowl- 
edge of nature. 

The "new way of ideas " is thus hard put to it in account- 
ing for the universal element in knowledge; it has 
even greater difficulties to face in defending the reality of 
knowledge. And, in the latter case, the author does not 
see the difficulties so clearly. His view is that the simple 
idea is the test and standard of reality. Whatever the 
mind contributes to our ideas removes them further from 
the reality of things; in becoming general, knowledge loses 
touch with things. But not all simple ideas carry with them 
the same significance for reality. Colours, smells, tastes, 
sounds, and the like are simple ideas, yet nothing resembles 
them in the bodies themselves ; but, owing to a certain bulk, 
figure, and motion of their insensible parts, bodies have "a 
power to produce those sensations in us." These, therefore, 
are called ' ' secondary qualities of bodies. On the other hand , 
"solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number" are 
also held by Locke to be simple ideas ; and these are resem- 

1 11. xii., 6. *I, iii., 19. 



n6 John Locke 

blances of qualities in body; "their patterns do really exist 
in the bodies themselves"; accordingly, they are "primary 
qualities of bodies." 1 In this way, by implication if not 
expressly, Locke severs, instead of establishing, the connec- 
tion between simple ideas and reality. The only ideas which 
can make good their claim to be regarded as simple ideas 
have nothing resembling them in things. Other ideas, no 
doubt, are said to resemble bodily qualities (an assertion for 
which no proof is given and none is possible) ; but these ideas 
have only a doubtful claim to rank as simple ideas. Locke's 
prevailing tendency is to identify reality with the simple 
idea, but he sometimes comes within an ace of the opposite 
view that the reference to reality is the work of thought. 

In the fourth book of his Essay, Locke proceeds to apply 
these results so as to determine the nature and extent of 
knowledge. As ideas are the sole immediate objects of the 
mind, knowledge can be nothing else than "the perception 
of the connexion of and agreement, or disagreement and 
repugnancy, of any of our ideas." This agreement or dis- 
agreement is said to be of four sorts: identity or diversity; 
relation ; co-existence or necessary connection ; real existence. 
Each of these kinds of knowledge raises its own questions; 
but, broadly speaking, one distinction may be taken as 
fundamental. In the same paragraph in which he restricts 
knowledge to the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, he 
admits one kind of knowledge which goes beyond the ideas 
themselves to the significance which they have for real 
existence. When the reference does not go beyond the ideas 
' ' in the mind, ' ' the problems that arise are of one order ; when 
there is a further reference to real things, another problem 
arises. The preceding books have prepared the way for the 
solution of both sets of problems. 

1 A similar distinction between qualities of body was formulated by Galileo, 
Hobbes, and Descartes; its origin may be traced to Democritus; and the words 
"primary" and "secondary" were occasionally used in this connection by 
Robert Boyle, Origine of Formes and Qualities (1666), pp. 10, 43, 100-1 ; cp. 
Tracts (1671), introduction, p. 18. 



The Certainty of Knowledge 117 

When ideas are together in the mind, we can discover 
their relations to one another; so long as they are not taken 
to represent archetypes outside the mind, there is no obstacle 
to certainty of knowledge. "All relation terminates in, and 
is ultimately founded on, those simple ideas we have got from 
sensation or reflection" 1 ; but "general and certain truths, 
are only founded in the habitudes and relations of abstract 
ideas." 2 In this way Locke vindicates the certainty of 
mathematics: although instructive, the science is merely 
ideal, and its propositions do not hold of things outside the 
mind. He thinks also that "morality is capable of demon- 
stration as well as mathematics." But, in spite of the en- 
treaties of his friend Molyneux, he never set out his ethical 
doctrine in detail. In the second book he had reduced moral 
good and evil to the pleasure and pain which — as reward and 
punishment — come to us from some lawgiver; thus they 
point to a source outside the mind. But his ground for 
maintaining the demonstrative character of morality is that 
moral ideas are "mixed modes," and therefore mental pro- 
ducts, so that their "precise real essence . . . may be 
perfectly known." He ventures upon two examples only 
of this demonstrative morality; and neither of them is 
more than verbal or gives any information about good or 
evil. Yet the doctrine is significant as showing the in- 
fluence upon Locke of another type of thought, of which 
there are many traces both in the Essay and in his other 
works. 

The real existences to which knowledge extends are 
self, God, and the world of nature. Of the first we have, 
says Locke, an intuitive knowledge, of the second a demon- 
strative knowledge, of the third a sensitive knowledge. This 
view he proceeds to explain and defend. Locke holds that 
the existence of the self is known by immediate intuition. 
Like Descartes, he thinks that doubt on this head is excluded. 
But he fails to point out how self can be an idea and thus 
belong to the material of knowledge. An idea of self cannot 

1 II, xxviii., 18. a IV, xii., 7. 



n8 John Locke 

come from sensation; and the simple ideas of reflection are 
all of mental operations, and not of the subject or agent of 
these operations. On the other hand, when he had occasion 
to discuss personal identity, he followed his new way of ideas, 
and made it depend on memory. His proof of the exist- 
ence of God belongs to the order called by philosophers cos- 
mological. It starts with the existence of a thinking self 
or mind, and argues from this position to the necessity for 
an intelligent first cause. Locke assumes, without ques- 
tion, the validity of the causal principle even beyond 
the range of possible experience. It was left for David 
Hume to take the momentous step of questioning this 
principle. 

Regarding self and God, therefore, Locke does not show 
any special originality of view. It is when he faces the 
question of the real existence of external bodies that his 
doctrine of ideas as the sole immediate object of the under- 
standing comes into play, and casts uncertainty upon the 
propositions of natural science. He does not, indeed, 
question the transition from the presence of an idea of sen- 
sation to the existence "at that time " of a thing which causes 
the idea in us. 1 Here, he thinks, we have "an assurance 
that deserves the name of knowledge," 2 although he admits 
that it is "not altogether so certain as our intuitive know- 
ledge, or the deductions of our reason employed about the 
clear abstract ideas of our own minds." Knowledge of this 
sort is merely sensitive; it does not extend beyond "the 
present testimony of our senses employed about particular 
objects that do then affect them." 3 Necessary connection 
here is beyond our reach. Any assertion about things, 
except in respect of their immediate presence to the senses 
— all the generalisations of natural science, therefore — fall 
short of knowledge strictly so called. "God has set some 
things in broad daylight" 4 ; but the science of nature is not 
one of them; there, as in many other matters, we have only 
"the twilight of probability"; but probability is sufficient 

1 iv, xi., 2. a iv, xi., 3. 3 iv, xi., 9. 4 iv, xii., 1. 



The Knowledge of Nature 119 

for our purposes. This sober practical note marks the out- 
come of the whole enquiry : ' 'our faculties being suited not 
to the full extent of being, nor to a perfect, clear, compre- 
hensive knowledge of things free from all doubt and scruple ; 
but to the preservation of us, in whom they are; and accom- 
modated to the use of life." 1 

In his other works Locke's practical interests find ample 
scope; he deals with most of the questions that attracted 
the mind of the day, and he left upon them the mark of his 
thought. In Two Treatises of Government he has two pur- 
poses in view : to refute the doctrine of absolute power, as it 
had been put forward by Sir Robert Filmer, and to establish 
a theory which would reconcile the liberty of the citizen with 
political order. The criticism of Filmer is complete. His 
theory of the absolute sovereignty of Adam, and so of kings 
as Adam's heirs, has lost all interest; and Locke's argument 
has been only too effective : the exhaustive reply to so ab- 
surd a thesis becomes itself wearisome. There is little 
direct reference to the more enduring work of Hobbes; 
but this work seems to have been in Locke's mind when 
he argued that the doctrine of absolute monarchy leaves 
sovereign and subjects in the state of nature towards one 
another. 

The constructive doctrines which are elaborated in the 
second treatise became the basis of social and political phi- 
losophy for many generations. Lab6ur is the origin and 
justification of property; contract or consent is the ground 
of government and fixes its limits. Behind both doctrines 
lies the idea of the independence of the individual man. The 
state of nature knows no government; but in it, as in political 
society, men are subject to the moral law, which is the law of 
God. Men are borne free and equal in rights. Whatever a 
man "mixes his labour with " is his to use. Or, at least, this 
was so in the primitive condition of human life in which there 
was enough for all and "the whole earth was America." 
1 iv. xi., 8. 



120 John Locke 

Locke sees that, when men have multiplied and land has 
become scarce, rules are needed beyond those which the 
moral law or law of nature supplies. But the origin of 
government is traced not to this economic necessity, but to 
another cause. The moral law is always valid, but it is not 
always kept. In the state of nature all men equally have the 
right to punish transgressors: civil society originates when, 
for the better administration of the law, men agree to dele- 
gate this function to certain officers. Thus government is 
instituted by a "social contract " ; its powers are limited, and 
they involve reciprocal obligations; moreover, they can be 
modified or rescinded by the authority which conferred them. 
Locke's theory is thus no more historical than the absolutism 
of 'Hobbes. It is a rendering of the facts of constitutional 
government in terms of thought, and it served its purpose as 
a justification of the Revolution settlement in accordance 
with the ideas of the time. 

Locke's writings on economic subjects do not rank in 
importance with his treatises on government. They deal 
with particular questions raised by the necessities of the 
political situation. No attempt had yet been made to 
isolate the fact of wealth and make it the subject of a special 
science. x The direction of industry and commerce was held 
to be part of the statesman's duty; but, in the seventeenth 
century, it began to be carried out with less thoroughness 
than before ; and at the same time new problems were opened 
up by the growth of the national life. The American colo- 
nies, the enterprise of the East India Company, the planting 
of Ireland, the commercial rivalry with Holland and with 
France, as well as questions regarding the rate of interest and 
the currency, occupied the attention of a crowd of writers in 
the second half of the century. Locke's own contributions 
were occasioned by the financial problems which faced the 
new government after the revolution. His reflections on the 
rate of interest show the growing disfavour with which 
appeals for state interference were beginning to be met. 

1 Cp. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, § 206. 



Economic Views 12 1 

He points out the obstacles to trade that are caused when the 
rate of interest is fixed by law, and he argues in favour of 
freedom for what he calls, in words which suggest Adam 
Smith, "the natural interest of money." Money "turns 
the wheels of trade"; therefore its course should not be 
stopped. At the same time, he holds no general brief 
against the interference of the state in matters of commerce ; 
nor is the language of the mercantilists foreign to him. 
Riches consist in plenty of gold and silver, for these command 
all the conveniences of life. Now, "in a country not fur- 
nished with mines, there are but two ways of growing rich, 
either conquest or commerce." For us commerce is the 
only way; and Locke condemns "the amazing politics of 
some late reigns" which had "let in other competitors with 
us for the sea. ' ' In the concluding portion of Some Consider- 
ations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and 
Raising the Value of Money (1691), Locke laid stress on 
the importance of a uniform and stable measure of values; 
four years later, in his Further Considerations, he defended 
his view against the proposals, involving a depreciation of 
the standard, which William Lowndes, secretary of the 
treasury, had set forth in An Essay for the amendments of the 
silver coins (1695). 

Locke's plea for toleration in matters of belief has become 
classical. His Common-Place Book shows that his mind was 
clear on the subject more than twenty years before the 
publication of his first Letter. The topic, indeed, was in the 
air all through his life, and affected him nearly. When he 
was a scholar at Westminster, the powers of the civil magis- 
trate in religious matters were the subject of heated discussion 
between presbyterians and independents in the assembly of 
divines that held its sessions within a stone's throw of his 
dormitory; and, when he entered Christ Church, John Owen, 
a leader of the independents, had been recently appointed 
to the deanery. There had been many arguments for toler- 
ation before this time, but they had come from the weaker 
party in the state. Thus Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of Prophe- 



122 John Locke 

sying appeared in 1646, when the fortunes of his side had 
suffered a decline. For Owen the credit has been claimed 
that he was the first who argued for toleration "when his 
party was uppermost." 1 He was called upon to preach 
before the House of Commons on 31 January, 1649, and per- 
formed the task without making any reference to the tragic 
event of the previous day; but to the published sermon he 
appended a remarkable discussion on toleration. Owen did 
not take such high ground as Milton did, ten years later, in 
his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes — affirming 
that "it is not lawful for any power on earth to compel in 
matters of religion." He abounds in distinctions, and 
indeed his position calls for some subtlety. He holds that 
the civil magistrate has duties to the church, and that he 
ought to give facilities and protection to its ministers, not 
merely as citizens but as preachers of "the truth"; on the 
other hand he argues that civil or corporal penalties are 
inappropriate as punishments for offences which are purely 
spiritual. 

The position ultimately adopted by Locke is not alto- 
gether the same as this. He was never an ardent puritan ; 
he had as little taste for elaborate theologies as he had for 
scholastic systems of philosophy; and his earliest attempt 
at a theory of toleration was connected with the view that, 
in religion, "articles in speculative opinions [should] be 
few and large, and ceremonies in worship few and easy." 
The doctrines which he held to be necessary for salvation 
would have seemed to John Owen a meagre and pitiful 
creed. And he had a narrower view also of the functions 
of the state. "The business of laws," he says, "is not to 
provide for the truth of opinions, but for the safety and secu- 
rity of the commonwealth, and of every particular man's 
goods and person. And so it ought to be. For truth 
certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift 
for herself. She seldom has received, and I fear never will 

1 W. Orme, "Memoirs of John Owen," prefixed to the latter 's Works, 
1826, i., p. 76. 



Doctrine of Toleration 123 

receive, much assistance from the power of great men, to 
whom she is but rarely known, and more rarely welcome. 
She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force, 
to procure her entrance into the minds of men. Errors, 
indeed, prevail by the assistance of foreign and borrowed 
succours. But if truth makes not her way into the under- 
standing by her own light, she will be but the weaker for any 
borrowed force violence can add to her." 

A church, according to Locke, is "a free and voluntary 
society"; its purpose is the public worship of God; the 
value of this worship depends on the faith that inspires 
it: "all the life and power of true religion consist in the 
inward and full persuasion of the mind ' ' ; and these matters 
are entirely outside the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate. 
Locke therefore (to use later language) was a voluntary 
in religion, as he was an individualist on questions of state 
interference. There is an exception, however, to his doctrine 
of the freedom of the individual in religious matters. The 
toleration extended to all others is denied to papists and to 
atheists ; and his inconsistency in this respect has been often 
and severely blamed. But it is clear that Locke made the 
exception not for religious reasons but on grounds of state 
policy. He looked upon the Roman Catholic as dangerous 
to the public peace because he professed allegiance to a 
foreign prince; and the atheist was excluded because on 
Locke's view, the existence of the state depends upon a 
contract, and the obligation of the contract, as of all moral 
law, depends upon the divine will. 

Locke's theological writings exhibit the characteristic 
qualities which his other works have rendered familiar. 
The traditions of theologians are set aside in them much 
as philosophical tradition was discarded in the Essay. He 
will search the Scriptures for religious doctrine just as he 
turned to experience for his philosophy, and he follows a 
method equally straightforward. Locke does not raise 
questions of Biblical criticism, such as Hobbes had already 
suggested and some of his own followers put forward soon 



124 John Locke 

afterwards; and the conclusions at which he arrives are in 
harmony with the Christian faith, if without the fulness 
of current doctrine. At the same time, his work belongs 
to the history of liberal theology and is intimately connected 
/ with the deism which followed; it treats religion like any 
other subject, and interprets the Bible like any other book; 
and, in his view of the nature of religion, he tends to describe 
it as if it consisted almost entirely in an attitude of intellec- 
tual belief — a tendency which became more prominent in the 
course of the eighteenth century. 

Locke's Thoughts concerning Education and his Conduct 
of the Understanding occupy an important place in the history 
of educational theory, though only a scanty reference can be 
made to them here. The subject had a right to prominence 
in his thought. The stress he laid on experience in the 
growth of mind led him to magnify, perhaps overmuch, the 
power of education. He held that "the minds of children 
[are] as easily turned, this way or that, as water itself." 
He underrated innate differences : " we are born with faculties 
and powers, capable almost of anything " ; and, "as it is in the 
body, so it is in the mind, practice makes it what it is." 
Along with this view went a profound conviction of the 
importance of education, and of the breadth of its aim. It 
has to fit men for life — for the world, rather than for the 
university. Instruction in knowledge does not exhaust it; 
it is essentially a training of character. 

Locke had the gift of making philosophy speak the 
language of ordinary life. As a consequence, his writings 
were followed by a whole literature of attack and defence. 
Of his critics Stillingfleet was the most prominent; he 
breathed an atmosphere of controversy, and his powers 
were displayed on many fields; he was not Locke's equal 
in intellectual fence; but he was a formidable opponent, 
and the difficulties in Locke's doctrine were pressed home 
by him with no little power. 

Another critic, who made some stir at the time, was 



The Critics of Locke 125 

John Sergeant (1 622-1 707), a convert to Roman Catholicism 
and an ardent controversialist. In The Method to Science 
(1696), he maintained that all inference can be reduced 
to a single type and that all truths are identical propositions ; 
cause and effect are really identical, and knowledge of one 
fact implies knowledge of all. "That things are what they 
are" is, he held, the fundamental principle of all knowledge. s 
This book was nearly finished, he tells us, before he became 
acquainted with Locke's Essay. A "cursory look" raised 
his hopes, but these were dashed by a "fuller view"; and, in 
1697, he published Solid Philosophy asserted against the Fan- 
cies of the Ideists. It consists of two parts : first a number of 
preliminaries, and then a series of reflections on separate 
portions of the Essay. Sergeant's fundamental contention 
is against Locke's view of the idea as the representative or 
semblance of a reality other than itself. With "idea" in 
this sense he will have nothing to do; we must beware of 
"phantasms" — and of philosophising by fancy instead of 
by reason. He urges that we could never have a right 
to assert that an idea resembles the reality: "the thing 
resembled must be known, not only besides the idea, but 
by other means than by it, which can be no way but by 
the thing itself existing in the understanding." This he calls 
"notion," and "a notion is the very thing itself existing in 
my understanding." He recognises that people will regard 
this as a paradox, but "unless this thesis be as true as it is 
strange, it is impossible any man living should know any- 
thing at all." And therefore he will put the paradox clearly. 
"When I say 'the glass is in the window,' . . . the very 
glass itself which is in the window must be also in my mind." 
But the paradox is lessened when we find that ' ' the self-same 
thing may have both a natural and an intellectual manner of 
existing." Things existed in the divine understanding 
before they were created, and still exist there; and a similar 
truth holds of the soul which knows anything: it "is intellec- 
tually that thing." Notion, we might therefore say, is the 
1 Cp. Adamson, Short History of Logic, pp. 147-8. 



126 John Locke 

thing known, qua intellectual; and the question arises 
whether this intellectual existence or "being in the 
understanding" means anything more than simply "being 
known." Sargeant anticipated the objections to the theory 
of 'representative perception made by the realists who 
criticised Hume ; but he did not adopt their theory of immedi- 
ate perception, nor would he have been content with it. Yet 
his own doctrine does not explain knowledge. 

Among the critics of Locke, mention may also be made 
of Henry Lee, William Sherlock, Archbishop King, John 
Broughton, and Thomas Burnet (author of Sacra telluris 
theoria). Another Thomas Burnet, of Kemnay in Aberdeen- 
shire, was the intermediary through whom Locke received 
the Reflexions of Leibniz upon the Essay. The Nouveaux 
Essais of Leibniz, in which the doctrines of the Essay were 
criticised section by section, were ready for publication when 
Locke's death occurred, but, owing to this event, their 
appearance was postponed indefinitely. Amongst the 
writers who sided with Locke were Samuel Bold, Vincent 
Perronet, and Mrs. Catherine Cockburn. Also of note is an 
anonymous work entitled Two Dissertations concerning Sense, 
and the Imagination. With an Essay on Consciousness (1728) 
which has been ascribed to Zachary Mayne. 1 The Essay 
investigates the functions of consciousness and self -conscious- 
ness, and is, as the author claims, the first independent 
enquiry into the subject. The Dissertations maintain that 
understanding is distinct from both sense and imagination. 
Although it is not easy, he says, "so to express a percep- 
tion of sense as that some intellectual notion shall not 
unawares creep in," sense-perception and notion have differ- 



1 A writer, chiefly on religion, who died in 1694. The ultimate authority 
(so far as I can trace) for ascribing the book to him is R. Watt, Bibliotheca 
Britannica (1824) ; but the preface "to the Reader" seems to me to imply that 
the book was not posthumously published. Noah Porter (Ueberweg's Hist, of 
Phil., E.T., ii., p. 368) suggests that it was by a son of Mayne; but the son 
referred to was not named Zachary, and the suggestion appears to be merely a 
Fuess. The only copy of the book known to me is in the British Museum. 



The Critics of Locke 127 

ent charac teristics and are due to different faculties: the 
former supplies the matter; the latter, the form of our 
knowledge. 

Two other writers of the period deserve further mention 
on their own account. These are Richard Burthogge and 
John Norris. 

Burthogge had no great reputation in his own day, and 
was almost entirely forgotten afterwards, till recent his- 
torians drew attention to his merits. His chief work, An 
Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits, was published 
in 1694 and dedicated to Locke "as to a person . . . 
acknowledged by all the learned world for one of the greatest 
masters of reason." But he cannot be counted either as 
a follower or as a critic of Locke. His characteristic doc- 
trines had been expressed in an earlier work, Organum vetus 
et novum, published in 1678. He had come into contact 
independently with the Cartesian reform ; he was acquainted 
(though he did not sympathise) with the work of Male- 
branche; and he may have been influenced directly by 
Geulincx, who was lecturing in the University of Ley den 
when Burthogge studied medicine there and, in 1662, gradu- 
ated M.D. Burthogge's object was to reconcile the experi- 
mental or mechanical with the scholastic method. His most 
striking doctrine, however, concerns the subjective factor 
in knowledge, and this led to his assertion of the relativity 
of all knowledge. What Descartes and Locke had said of 
the secondary qualities is generalised. The understanding 
apprehends things only by its own notions: these are to it 
what colours are to the eye or sounds to the ear; whole and 
part, substance and accident, cause and effect are but 
"entities of reason conceived within the mind," and "have 
no more of any real true existence without it, than colours 
have without the eye, or sounds without the ear. ' ' With this 
radical doctrine of relativity Burthogge combined a Neo- 
platonic metaphysic. He held that there is one spirit that 
actuates and acts in all, in men as well as in nature, and that 
the spirit of nature is not (as Henry More taught) an incor- 



128 John Locke 



s 



poreal substance, but simply the "plastic faculty" of the 
spirit of God. 

John Norris, fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and 
rector of Bemerton, was a man of much greater and more 
enduring reputation. He was a voluminous author of 
discourses, letters, and poems, as well as of the longer and 
more systematic work on which his fame depends, An Essay 
towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World, the first 
part of which was published in 170 1, and the second in 1704. 
In temper of mind Norris may be regarded as the antithesis 
of Locke. He represents mysticism as against the latter's 
critical empiricism. But it would be a mistake to regard him 
as lacking in clearness of logical faculty. He was diffuse, 
and his argument would sometimes break off into devotional 
reflection, or into verse; but, from these digressions, he would 
return to the argument refreshed and ready to abide by its 
logic. Different as he is from Locke, both exhibit the power- 
ful influence that swept over European thought from the 
mind of Descartes. But Locke was critical of the more 
speculative elements in the philosophy of Descartes, whereas 
these were the thoughts that appealed most strongly to 
Norris. The course of his studies, especially in Plato and 
St. Augustine, and the tone of his mind, made him welcome 
the speculative, if mystical, development of Cartesianism due 
to Father Malebranche. Malebranche had a number of 
followers in England at this time ; and two translations of the 
Recherche de la Verite appeared in the year 1694; but Norris 
was the only writer of note who adopted his views ; and his 
importance is due to the fact that he was no mere follower. 
He had thought out — one may even say, he had lived — the 
theory for himself. In his work he considers the ideal theory, 
first, as it is in itself, and then in its relation to our knowledge. 
He holds that the very nature or essences of things (as dis- 
tinguished from their existence) are divine ideas or "degrees 
of being in the divine nature" 1 ; and by the same theory he 

1 Ideal or Intelligible World, i., p. 232. 



John Norris 129 

explains our perception of things. "Tis generally allowed 
that the things without us are not perceived immediately by 
themselves, but by their ideas. The only question is, by 
what ideas, or what these ideas are?" His answer to this 
question is, that they are the divine ideas, or, in the words of 
Malebranche, that we "see all things in God." 1 

I Ibid., ii., pp. 442-3. 



CHAPTER VII 
Berkeley and His Contemporaries 

THE period of English thought which followed Locke's 
death was fruitful both in great writers and in impor- 
tant movements. Locke's own influence was felt 
everywhere. His new way of approaching the subject, his 
freedom from the traditional technicalities of the schools, and 
his application of his method to a wide range of human 
interests, made philosophy count for more with reflective 
writers generally, and determined the line of thought taken 
by the greater minds. Speculation turned mainly upon 
three problems — the problem of knowledge, the problem of 
religion, and the problem of morality. The treatment of 
each problem led to striking developments; and Locke's 
influence affected them all, though in unequal degrees. 
The idealism of Berkeley followed directly from his funda- 
mental positions; the leaders of the deists professed them- 
selves his disciples, though they arrived at conclusions 
different from his; the work of the moralists was less fully 
determined by his speculations, though his ethical views 
were perhaps seldom far from their minds. In the present 
chapter, this division of problems will be followed; it will 
treat, in succession, of the metaphysicians, the deists, and 
the moralists. Most writers, indeed, did not limit their 
interests to a single problem ; and their place here will have 
to be determined by a view of the permanent importance 
of their work in different departments. Strict chronological 

130 



George Berkeley 131 

order also, to some extent, will be sacrificed. In this way, 
consideration of the writings of Samuel Clarke — although 
he was a prominent figure in the whole philosophical move- 
ment, and one of the earliest to attain eminence — will be 
postponed till the last section of the chapter. 

I. Metaphysicians 

George Berkeley was born at Dysert castle, county 
Kilkenny, Ireland, on 12 March, 1685, and educated at 
Kilkenny school and Trinity College, Dublin, which he 
entered in 1700 and where he remained, first as a scholar, 
afterwards as fellow and tutor, till January, 17 13. These 
early years are the most remarkable in Berkeley's literary 
career. He published, anonymously, two mathematical 
tracts in 1707; his Essay towards a New Theory of Vision 
appeared in 1709, his Principles of Human Knowledge, Part 
I, in 1 710, and when, in 1 7 13, he got leave of absence from his 
college and set out for London, it was ''to print his new 
book" — Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous — as 
well as "to make acquaintance with men of merit." These 
three books reveal the new thought which inspired his life; 
and the evidence of his Commonplace Book (discovered and 
published by Campbell Fraser in 1871) shows that he 
was barely twenty years of age when this new thought took 
hold of him. Berkeley was absent from Ireland for eight 
years, spending his time in London, France, and Italy 
(where, on a second visit, he resided four years). During 
this period he did little literary work ; he made some progress, 
indeed, with the second part of his Principles, but the MS. 
was lost in his travels, and the work was never resumed ; his 
Latin treatise De motu was written as he was on his way 
home in 1720, and published in 1721 ; he collected materials 
for a natural history of Sicily, but this MS. also was lost; a 
journal written in Italy, however, and many letters remain 
to show his appreciation of the beauties of nature and art. 

His return to England gave a new direction to his energy. 



132 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

The country was going through the period of collapse which 
follows a speculative mania ; and Berkeley saw the true cause 
of the national decadence in the decline of religion, the decay 
of public spirit, and the prevalent corruption of manners. 
One hundred and forty years later, Mark Pattison described 
the period as "an age whose poetry was without romance, 
whose philosophy was without insight, and whose public men 
were without character." 1 A similar judgment forms the 
burden of Berkeley's Essay towards preventing the ruin of 
Great Britain, published anonymously in 1721. He returned 
to Ireland and to Trinity College later in the same year, 
and was presented to the deanery of Dromore. The office 
attracted him because it would give him leisure for reflection 
and for philanthropic work; but a legal question arose as to 
the right of presentation, and his hopes received a check. 
Berkeley is one of the most perfect characters among men of 
letters; but his perfection was not colourless. He threw 
himself with energy into the defence of his rights, and at least 
had the satisfaction of a protracted lawsuit. While the case 
was still pending, in 1724, he was appointed to a much more 
valuable preferment — the deanery of Derry. "It is said to 
be worth £1500 a year," he wrote, "but I do not consider it 
with a view to enriching myself. I shall be perfectly con- 
tented if it facilitates and recommends my scheme of 
Bermuda." 

This scheme seems to have taken hold of Berkeley's 
mind about two years previously 2 ; to it he devoted his 
fortune and ten years of his life. His plan was to found 
a college in the Bermudas, with the twofold object of "the 
reformation of manners among the English in our western 
plantations, and the propagation of the gospel among the 
American savages." Berkeley spent four years in London 

1 Essays and Reviews, i860, p. 254. 

2 " It is now about ten months since I have determined with myself to spend 
the residue of my days in the Island of Bermuda, where I trust in Providence 
I may be the mean instrument of doing good to mankind. " Letter of 4 March, 
1723, in Rand, Berkeley and Percival (1914), p. 203. 



Berkeley in America 133 

in endeavouring to extract a charter and grant of money 
from a reluctant government and subscriptions from an 
unbelieving generation ; he had to frequent the court and dis- 
pute twice a week with Samuel Clarke before Queen Caroline, 
then Princess of Wales ; he listened to the banter of the wits 
of the Scriblerus Club, and then replied with such eloquence 
and enthusiasm that they ' ' rose all up together, with earnest- 
ness exclaiming, 'Let us set out with him immediately'"; 
he canvassed every member of parliament with such effect 
that, in the Commons, there were only two opponents of the 
vote; even Walpole subscribed to the scheme, though he 
secretly determined that the government grant of money 
should never be paid. Bermuda became the fashion, and 
Berkeley was idolised. But he grudged the waste of time, 
and at last — with only a promise from Walpole that the grant 
would be paid — he set sail from Greenwich in September, 
1728 with his newly-married wife. In January, 1729, he 
landed at Newport, Rhode Island. There he remained for 
nearly three years, waiting vainly for the government to 
fulfil its promises. This it never did; he never reached 
Bermuda, and his college was never founded. But he left 
his impress upon the early efforts of American philosophy ; his 
interpretation of the material world modified the thinking of 
Jonathan Edwards, the metaphysician and theologian of 
New England ; and the memory of his visit has been treasured 
by the American mind. \The new world also affected 
Berkeley's imagination and led to a set of Verses on the pros- 
pect of planting arts and learning in America. One of his lines 
— ' ' Westward the course of empire takes its way ' ' — has come 
to be looked upon as prophetic; but his idea was not geo- 
graphical ; it was that better times would follow better morals 
"where nature guides and virtue rules.y. 

Berkeley remained in London for more than two years 
after his return to England ; and a new period of authorship 
began, during which he joined in the controversies of the age. 
In Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (1732), written in 
the seclusion of his home in Rhode Island, he applied his 



134 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

general principles in defence of religion against the free- 
thinkers. In 1733 appeared his Theory of Vision, or Visual 
Language Vindicated and Explained; and in the following year 
he published The Analyst, in which he criticised the positions 
of the new mathematics which, in his view, were connected 
with a materialistic conception of the world. This bold 
attempt to carry the war into the enemy's country called 
forth many pamphlets on the other side. In the same year 
Berkeley returned to Ireland as bishop of Cloyne; and 
henceforth his literary work was divided between questions 
of social reform and religious reflection. The reform is 
represented by The Querist (1735), a work full of penetrating 
remarks; both subjects are combined in Sins: a Chain of 
Philosophical Reflexions (1744), which begins by expounding 
the medicinal virtues of tar- water, and ends in an exposition 
of idealism in which the Lockean strain has given place to 
the Platonic. A Miscellany containing several tracts was 
published in October, 1752. Two months earlier he had 
left Cloyne that he might spend the remainder of his days at 
Oxford; and there he died on 14 January, 1 753. 

When Berkeley launched his idealism upon an unsym- 
pathetic world, he had read Descartes and Malebranche 
and been attracted by the philosophy of Plato; he was also 
acquainted with the works of the mathematicians and 
natural philosophers, and suspected a trend to materialism 
in their theories; but his thought had been formed under 
the influence of Locke, whose Essay found earlier recognition 
from the academic authorities at Dublin than from those of 
English universities. At the time when Berkeley entered 
Trinity College and for ten years afterwards, the provost 
was Peter Browne, afterwards bishop of Cork, a student 
and critic of the Essay. He had already attracted attention 
by an Answer to Toland (1697). His more original works 
followed after a long interval — The Procedure, extent and lim- 
its of human understanding, in 1728, and the work called, 
for short, Divine Analogy, in 1733. These two books are 
connected with Berkeley's later work, for the theory of our 



The Immaterial Hypothesis 135 

knowledge of God propounded in the former is criticised in 
one of the dialogues of Alciphron, and the criticisms are 
replied to in Browne's Divine Analogy. Browne could not 
accept Locke's account of knowledge by means of ideas, 
when it came to be applied to mind. Mind and body, he 
held, are not known in the same way. We have, indeed, 
ideas of our mental operations as these are connected with 
the body ; but minds or spirits — whether divine or human — 
can be known only by analogy. This view Berkeley, in 
later life, attacked; but it points to a difficulty in his own 
theory also — a difficulty which he came to see, without fully 
resolving it. There is, however, no sufficient evidence for 
saying that Browne had any direct influence upon Berkeley's 
early speculation. 

Berkeley's theory emerges full-grown, if not fully armed. 
Even in his Common-place Book there is no hesitation in the 
references to "my doctrine," "the immaterial hypothesis." 
Only persons exist : "all other things are not so much exist- 
ences as manners of the existence of persons. ' ' He knows that 
"a mighty sect of men will oppose me," that he will be called 
young, an upstart, a pretender, vain; but his confidence is 
not shaken: "Newton begs his principles; I demonstrate 
mine." He did not, at first, reveal the whole truth to the 
world. An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision deals 
with one point only — the relation between the objects of 
sight and those of touch. Molyneux had once set the 
problem to Locke, whether a man born blind, if he recovered 
his sight, would be able by sight alone to distinguish from one 
another a cube and a sphere, with both which he had been 
previously acquainted by touch. Molyneux answered his 
own question in the negative, and, Locke expressed agree- 
ment with his solution and admiration for the insight which 
it showed. Berkeley was of one mind with them about the 
answer to the query, but for a more fundamental reason. 
If extension be an idea common to sight and touch (as Locke 
held), then visible squareness must be the same as, or have 
something in common with, tangible squareness. In virtue 



136 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

of this, the man born blind, so soon as he is made to see, 
should be able to distinguish between a visible square and a 
visible circle, and to identify this distinction with the dis- 
tinction between the square and the circle already known by 
touch. If he is unable to do so, it is because there is nothing 
in common between the visible object and the tangible. And 
this is Berkeley's view. "The objects of sight and touch," 
he says, ''make, if I may so say, two sets of ideas which are 
widely different from each other. ... A man born blind, 
being made to see, would at first have no idea of distance by 
sight : the sun and stars, the remotest objects as well as the 
nearer, would all seem to be in his eye, or rather in his 
mind." 

A great part of the Essay is devoted to an explanation 
of the apparent immediateness with which the distance of 
an object is seen. But the essence of the whole consists 
in two propositions — that the objects (or ideas) of sight have 
nothing in common with the objects of touch, and that the 
connection of sight and touch is "arbitrary" and learned by 
experience only. The connection is arbitrary; but it is 
regular and constant. What we see suggests to us what 
we may expect to touch and handle. The whole visible 
world — as was further enforced in his Theory of Vision or 
Visual Language — consists of a set of signs which, like a 
language, have for their purpose to convey a meaning; 
though, like the words in a language, they neither resemble 
nor cause that meaning, nor have any necessary connection 
with it. In using sight to guide our movements we interpret 
the language of God. 

Some of the details of Berkeley's Essay need revision in the 
light of modern study of the senses. But this does not ob- 
scure its merit as one of the most brilliant pieces of psycho- 
logical analysis in the English language. A more serious 
objection to it is that the author pushes too far his war 
against abstractions. It is true, as he urges, that sight 
and touch have no common element that can be separated 
from both and become an independent presentation. 



Ideas and Things 137 

Against " abstract ideas" of this sort, his polemic was fully 
justified. But the different senses are not disconnected 
either in genesis or in function, and reflection may discover 
certain lines of similarity among their processes. Berkeley 
decides too quickly that the connection is arbitrary, because 
of the striking difference in their contents, and because one 
cannot be called cause and another effect ; and he argues too 
easily from this arbitrary connection to divine volition. He 
never gave the same close attention to the conceptual factor 
in knowledge as he gave to sense and imagination, and in his 
early work the conceptual factor is almost entirely ignored. 
The Essay did not disclose all that was in Berkeley's 
mind. It kept to its topic, the relation of the objects of 
sight to those of touch, and it did not question the views 
commonly held about the latter. The full revelation came, 
a year afterwards, in A Treatise concerning the Principles of 
Human Knowledge. This small volume, more talked about 
than read at the time — it took twenty -four years to reach a 
second edition — is one of the works which have had a critical 
influence upon the course of European thought. Its impor- 
tance, in this respect, ranks it with Locke's Essay and Hume's 
Treatise of Human Nature^ The fresh step which Berkeley 
took was short and simple and easy; when taken, it shows 
us the whole world from a new point of view. Locke had said 
that all the objects of knowledge are ideas, and he had thus 
much difficulty — as indeed Descartes had had before him — 
in defending the reality of the things which he supposed to be 
represented by the ideas. Berkeley solves the difficulty by 
denying the distinction. The ideas are the thingsA "It is 
indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that 
houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, 
have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being 
perceived by the understanding." But the opinion needs 
only to be called in question to show the contradiction it 
involves; for these objects are the things we perceive by 
sense, and we perceive nothing but our own ideas. With 
magnificent confidence he passes at once to the assertion: 



138 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

''Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind 
that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I 
take this important one to be, viz. that all the choir of heaven 
and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which 
compose the mighty frame of the world, have any subsistence 
without a mind ; that their being is to be perceived or known." 
As regards material things, therefore, a single phrase 
expresses Berkeley's thought : ■ ' their esse is per dpi. ' ' Theirs 
is a passive, dependent existence. Active, independent 
existence can belong to minds or persons only. From this 
position he never wavered, though there is a good deal of 
difference between his earlier and his later views. He saw 
that, as the existence of ideas consists in being perceived, so 
mind must be regarded as perceiving. "Existence ... is 
per dpi or perdpere" is one of his earliest statements; and, as 
men may sleep or be rendered unconscious, he is willing, at 
first, to accept the consequence that "men die or are in a 
state of annihilation oft in a day. ' ' But this solution seemed 
too dangerous and was soon relinquished, and thus he held it 
"a plain consequence that the soul always thinks." As 
there is no material substance, so also there can be no 
material cause. Material things, being our ideas and 
altogether passive, are related to one another not as cause 
and effect but only as sign and thing signified. We learn to 
understand their grouping, and thus one idea suggests others, 
the like of which have followed it in previous experience; 
while further experience confirms the anticipation. What 
we call laws of nature, therefore, are simply a statement of 
the orderly sequences in which the ideas of the senses occur 
in our minds. The material substance to which philosophers 
refer these ideas as their cause is, he labours to prove, an 
unmeaning and self -contradictory abstraction. Certain 
ideas — those which we call ideas of imagination — are con- 
structed by the individual mind ; but the ideas of sense, or 
sensible things, though they exist only in the mind, are not 
caused by my mind or by any other finite mind. There 
must, therefore, be "an omnipresent eternal Mind, which 



Spiritual Reality 139 

knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our 
view in such a manner, and according to such rules, as he 
himself hath ordained, and are by us termed the laws of 
nature. 1 ' 

Berkeley's works, for the most part, are of the nature 
of introductions, vindications, and polemics. He explained 
his new principle and defended it and applied it to current 
controversies with wonderful resource of argument and 
beauty of language, and with the power that came from 
intense conviction. In Hylas and in Alciphron he used 
the dialogue form, with a skill never excelled in English 
philosophical literature, to bring out the difficulties in his 
view and to set forth their triumphant solution. But he did 
not work out his spiritual interpretation of reality into a sys- 
tem. He would answer an objection without following out 
the bearing of his answer upon other portions of his philoso- 
phy. He began, like Locke, by asserting that all the objects 
of our knowledge are ideas; and he divided ideas into three 
classes : those of sense, those of mental operations, and those 
of memory or imagination. To which class then (we may 
ask) do knowledge of self, of other finite spirits, of God, and 
of the laws of nature belong? The question does not seem 
to have occurred to Berkeley when, with all the ardour 
of a discoverer, he wrote his Principles. But he raises it 
in Hylas, and says that, in reflection, we have an immediate 
knowledge of self as an active being and, by inference there- 
from, of other finite spirits and of God. This knowledge, as 
well as our knowledge of laws of nature, is not through ideas, 
and he calls it notion. We have, therefore, not merely ideas 
of sensible things and of mental operations and of remem- 
bered or imagined objects, but also notions of spirits and 
laws. The terminology was used again when he came to 
issue the second edition of the Principles; but he did not see 
that it required a modification of the first sentence of that 
work, which declares that all the objects of human knowledge 
are ideas. How idea and notion are related to one another 
in knowledge, we cannot gather from him. But this is clear; 



140 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

that ideas are inert and fleeting, and that it is through notion 
that we become acquainted with the permanent active forces 
of the real universe. 

Berkeley stood at a parting of the ways in thought, 
though he was hardly conscious of their divergence. On 
the one hand, his principles that all knowledge is of ideas, 
and that all ideas are of one or other of the three kinds 
enumerated by him, lead to a view which excludes from 
knowledge not only material substance, but mind also 
and the reign of law in nature. At times, especially in 
his Common-place Book, he seems on the verge of drawing 
this conclusion, and thus of anticipating Hume. After- 
wards, he sees it only as something to be guarded against. 
He could not think of the idea as, so to speak, self-supporting. 
It exists only in so far as it is • 'in the mind " : mind is the true 
reality, the only agency ; ideas exist only in minds, finite or 
infinite ; and the laws of nature are the order in which ideas 
are produced in us by the infinite Mind. Spiritual agency, 
spiritual reality, is thus his fundamental thought; and in 
Siris, the last of his philosophical works, this thought emerges 
from the midst of reflections on empirical medicine and old- 
fashioned physiology. No longer dominated by the Lockean 
heritage of the sensitive origin of knowledge, his idealism is 
assimilated to the Platonic. The work is full of comments 
on Neoplatonic writers, ancient and modern ; and there is an 
absence of the simplicity and clearness of his earlier writ- 
ings ; systematic development of his theory is still absent ; 
but there is hardly a page without remarks of pregnant in- 
sight, and he is everywhere loyal to the vision of truth with 
which his career opened. 

In 1 71 3, three years after the appearance of Berkeley's 
Principles, Arthur Collier, rector of Langford Magna near 
Salisbury, published a work entitled Clavis Universalis and 
professing to be "a demonstration of the non-existence or 
impossibility of an external world." Collier was born in 
1680, and, like Berkeley, seems to have formed his conclu- 



Arthur Collier 141 

sions at an early age : for he says that it was ' ' after a ten years' 
pause and deliberation " that he decided to put his argument 
before the reader. His results are almost identical with 
Berkeley's; but he arrived at them in a different way. He 
seems to have been uninfluenced by Locke ; Descartes, Male- 
branche, and Norris were his favourite authors; and there 
was enough in their writings to raise the question. Collier 
writes in a straightforward and simple style ; he has none of 
Berkeley's imagination or eloquence; he does not contend 
that he has the plain man on his side, nor does he apply his 
results to current controversy. But he has no less con- 
fidence than Berkeley had in the truth of his views ; and his 
arguments are clearly put. Often they resemble Berkeley's ; 
though greater use is made of traditional metaphysical dis- 
cussions. Among these the most notable is the argument 
from the antinomies of philosophical thought. The external 
world, conceived as independent of mind, has been held 
infinite in extent, and also it has been held to be finite; 
and equally good and conclusive reasons can be given for 
either alternative. Similarly, it is "both finitely and in- 
finitely divisible." But a thing cannot have two con- 
tradictory predicates. External matter, therefore, does not 
exist. 

II. Deists 

The first half of the eighteenth century was the period 
of the deistical controversy in English theology. The 
writers commonly classed together as deists are Charles 
Blount, John Toland, Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, 
Thomas Woolston, Thomas Morgan, Thomas Chubb, Peter 
Annet, and Henry Dodwell the younger. Among deists are 
also reckoned Bolingbroke and the third Earl of Shaftesbury, 
who differed from the rest in paying little attention 
to the details of theological controversy, and differed 
from one another in their philosophical interest and im- 
portance. 



142 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

The works of Charles Blount belong to the last quarter 
of the seventeenth century. He accepted the "five points" 
of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. * This marked him as a deist, 
and he did not reject the name . In his A nima Mundi ( 1 679) , 
he defended the system of natural religion, and, at the same 
time, emphasised the comparative merits of the heathen 
religions. His Great is Diana of the Ephesians (1680) is an 
attack on priestcraft. In the same year he published an 
English translation of The two first books of Philostratus, con- 
cerning the Life of Apollonius Tyaneus. On each chapter of 
this followed "illustrations" by the translator, in which it 
was easy to find an attack on the Christian miracles and on 
the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. "Faith," he says, is 
"like a piece of blank paper whereon you may write as well 
one miracle as another"; whereas his own Christianity was 
founded exclusively on reason. Blount committed suicide 
in 1693 because he was prevented from marrying his de- 
ceased wife's sister. Two years afterwards his Miscellane- 
ous Works (including The Oracles of Reason) were published 
by his disciple Charles Gildon. Gildon defended both 
the doctrine and the suicide of his master; but, not long 
after, was himself converted to the orthodox belief by read- 
ing Charles Leslie's Short and Easy Method with the Deists 
(1698). 

So far as Blount was concerned, the controversy might 
have ended here. For, despite his learning and ability, he 
was something of a free-lance; he could not match himself 
with his opponents in Christian theology or in biblical 
learning; his criticism and his own doctrines revealed an 
outside point of view. There were, however, many sympa- 
thisers with his general attitude among wits, and perhaps 
also among scholars: Leslie's reply is a testimony to the 
prevalence of deism. And, shortly before the publication 
of that triumphant reply, there appeared a work by a new 
author — Toland's Christianity not Mysterious — with which 
the controversy entered upon a fresh phase. Within the 
1 See above, p. 40. 



The Rise of Deism 143 

English church the Roman controversy had died down, 
and the protestant faith had been firmly established. The 
time was ripe for the discussion of the content and basis 
of protestant theology; and the great trinitarian contro- 
versy followed. At this point, the chief stimulus to theo- 
logical thought came from within the church, indeed, but 
from outside the ranks of professional theologians. Locke's 
Reasonableness of Christianity appeared in 1695, and marked 
out the ground to be occupied by almost all controversialists 
for a long time to come. In his straightforward way Locke 
•went to the Scriptures : miracles and prophecy convinced his 
reason of their authority; the same reason was used for 
understanding the doctrines they revealed. He did not 
linger over the former — the external evidences, as they were 
called, of religion. His interest was in the content of the 
faith. The same interest dominates the controversies of 
the first half of the eighteenth century ; it was only afterwards 
that the question of the external evidences came to the front. 
Throughout the whole century, however, and by both parties, 
the question was debated in the court of reason. The con- 
troversy was not between rationalists and those who dis- 
trusted reason. The question was what, on rational grounds, 
ought to be believed. And, as Clarke and Tillotson and 
Butler appealed to reason not less than Toland and Collins 
and their successors did, so too there was another point of 
agreement between the orthodox and the leaders of the 
deists. The latter also, for the most part, and in the earlier 
stages of the dispute, at any rate, professed to accept the 
Christian faith. The problem was as to its content: what 
was its genuine meaning and the significance of its essential 
doctrines ? 

This much must be borne in mind by anyone who would 
understand Toland, especially in his earliest and most 
celebrated work. Toland was born near Londonderry in 
Ireland in 1670 and died at Putney near London in 1722. 
His education was varied. He was at school in Ireland, went 
to the University of Glasgow, took his degree at Edinburgh, 



144 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

afterwards studied at Leyden, and spent some time at Oxford, 
where he wrote Christianity not Mysterious (1696). He led 
a strenuous and varied life, with somewhat uncertain means 
of livelihood. He was the object of bitter attack by the 
controversialists opposed to him ; and they called in the aid 
of the civil power. After the publication of his first book, he 
had to leave Ireland to escape arrest by the Irish parliament, 
and in England he was for a time in danger of prosecution. 
He busied himself in political as well as in theological con- 
troversy, defended the protestant succession, took part, 
though unofficially, in important missions, and became 
known to the Electress Sophia and her daughter the Queen of 
Prussia, to whom his Letters to Serena (1704) were addressed. 
He made some influential friends also, and Leibniz was 
among his correspondents. 

Christianity not Mysterious shows the influence of Locke — 
of his Essay, however, rather than of his Reasonableness of 
Christianity, which, published only a year before Toland's 
book, does not seem to have affected its argument. Locke's 
name is not mentioned by Toland; but Locke's view of 
knowledge, as consisting in the agreement of ideas, forms 
the starting-point of his argument, and in the preliminary 
matter he often adopts Locke's words. But he is more 
aggressive in applying his principles. Locke's aim was to 
show that Christianity was reasonable; Toland's, to demon- 
strate that nothing contrary to reason, and nothing above 
reason, can be part of Christian doctrine. There are no 
mysteries in it. Revelation has unveiled what was formerly 
mysterious. Whoever reveals anything must do so in words 
that are intelligible, and the matter must be possible. The 
things revealed, therefore, are no longer mysteries. This 
holds whether the revelation come from God or from man. 
The only difference between the two cases is that a man 
may lie and God cannot. Without ideas neither faith nor 
knowledge is possible; and, "if by knowledge be meant 
understanding what is believed, then I stand by it that faith 
is knowledge." The ideas may not be adequate; but, in 



John Toland 145 

nature as well as in divinity, we have to be content without 
adequate ideas; even a "spire of grass" is not known in its 
real essence; we understand only its properties or attri- 
butes; and God and the soul are known in the same 
way. 

Toland was a scholar and boasted acquaintance with 
more than ten languages. He was also a theologian and could 
meet his opponents on their own ground. This interest 
dominated his literary career ; even his political work was in 
the service of the protestant religion, and his scholarship 
was chiefly shown in the field of Christian origins. His own 
theological views went through various modifications. He 
was brought up a Roman Catholic ; at the age of sixteen he 
became "zealous against popery"; afterwards he was con- 
nected with protestant dissenters; when Christianity not 
Mysterious was published he reckoned himself a member of 
the Church of England, his sympathies being with the broad 
(or, as it was then called, low) church party. When his book 
was burned at the door of the Irish house of parliament, he 
may have felt his churchmanship insecure. His later works 
exhibit its gradual disappearance. 

In Amyntor (1699), a defence of his Life of Milton (1698), 
he gave, in answer to an opponent, a long list of early apocry- 
phal Christian literature. His interest in researches of this 
kind was shown afterwards in Nazarenus; or Jewish, Gentile, 
and Mahometan Christianity (17 18). His text, in this work, 
was an Italian manuscript with Arabic annotations, which 
he had discovered. He took it for a translation from the 
Arabic and identified it with the lost Gospel of Barnabas. 
In both conjectures later scholarship has shown that he was 
in error. But his discovery led to some remarkable reflec- 
tions on the differences between the Jewish and Gentile 
Christians in the early church. He maintained that the 
former, who kept the Jewish law themselves but without 
enforcing it on the Gentiles, represented "the true original 
plan of Christianity"; and he declared that he himself took 
"less exception to the name of Nazaren than to any other." 



146 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

More than a century afterwards the same distinction as that 
upon which he laid stress was made fundamental in the ex- 
planation of early church history offered by F. C. Baur and 
his followers. 

Among other topics in the Letters to Serena was a dis- 
cussion of Spinoza, which perhaps shows the trend of Toland's 
speculation. Leibniz, at any rate, in a letter to him of 30 
April, 1709, remarks that Toland, in several of his books, 
refers to the opinion that there is no other eternal being than 
the universe but offers no refutation of this "pernicious" 
error. In his reply Toland promises an answer to this point 
in his next; but he does not seem to have kept his word. 
Pantheism, at any rate, was the doctrine with which he 
ended, if we may trust the evidence of Paniheisticon (1720). 
This curious piece was issued anonymously, with "Cosmo- 
polis " on the title-page as the place of publication. But the 
author took no pains to conceal his identity, for the preface 
is signed "Janus Julius Eoganesius." Now, Inis Eogain or 
Inishowen was the place of Toland's birth; and Janus Julius 
were the extraordinary names by which he was christened 
and known, till a sensible schoolmaster changed them to 
John. The little book, which is written in Latin, describes 
the ritual of certain (supposed or real) pantheistic societies. 
It imitates the fashion of a prayer-book, gives the responses 
of the congregation, and is printed with red rubrics. As 
a whole, it is a clever skit, though in the very worst 
taste. But Toland had not received any favours from for- 
tune; he had been harshly attacked by his opponents, 
even when he regarded himself as a defender of the Chris- 
tian faith ; and perhaps it gave him satisfaction to retaliate 
bitterly. 

Toland thus began as a liberal or rational theologian, 
and ended with some form of pantheistic creed. His writings 
do not enable us to trace accurately the steps in this change 
of view ; but there is no evidence that he ever accepted the 
cardinal point of what is commonly called deism— the idea 
of God as an external creator who made the world, set it 



Anthony Collins 147 

under certain laws, and then left it alone. * He was a free- 
thinker rather than a deist. And this also describes the posi- 
tion occupied by Anthony Collins, the friend and disciple of 
Locke, in his best-known work, A Discourse of Free-thinking, 
occasioned by the rise and growth oj a sect calVd Free-thinkers 
(171 3). Bentley's brilliant criticism of this book, in his 
Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free-thinking, gained for it 
an unenviable reputation. The Remarks admitted of no 
answer ; but they were more successful in demolishing a free- 
thinker than in refuting free-thinking ; and perhaps this was 
Bentley's sole object in exposing the author's slipshod scholar- 
ship. But he was not blind to an ambiguity of which Collins 
had taken advantage. "Free-thinking" may mean nothing 
more than the exercise of reason. If this had been all that 
Collins argued for, there would have been little point in his 
contention, for both parties claimed that they followed 
reason. So far, Tillotson would certainly have been with 
him, and indeed Collins claims his support. But he used the 
term also to cover the attitude or doctrines of a " sect of free- 
thinkers, " without any clear account of their position, or any 
suggestion that the word had more than one meaning. The 
ambiguity is connected with the duality of the motives which 
seem to have determined the writings of Collins. One of these 
was faith in reason — a faith which he had inherited from 
Locke; the other was a suspicion and dislike of priestcraft. 
These two motives are indicated by the titles of his earliest 
works — Essay concerning the use of Reason (1707), and Priest- 
craft in Perfection ( 1 709) . They are combined in A Discourse 



1 Samuel Clarke (Being and Attributes of God, 9th ed., pp. 159 ff.) dis- 
tinguishes four classes of Deists: (1) those who "pretend to believe the exist- 
ence of an eternal, infinite, independent, intelligent Being; and . . . teach 
also that this Supreme Being made the world: though at the same time . . . 
they fancy God does not at all concern himself in the government of the world, 
nor has any regard to, or care of, what is done therein"; (2) those who, also, 
admit divine providence in nature; (3) those who, further, have some notion 
of the moral perfections of God; (4) those who, in addition, acknowledge man's 
duties to God, and see the need for a future state of rewards and punishments — 
but all this only "so far as 'tis discoverable by the light of nature." 



148 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

of Free-thinking in a way which generates more heat than 
light. Collins held firmly to a belief in God as established by 
reason ; but (though sometimes in guarded language) he was 
a hostile critic of the Christian creed. His works produced a 
crowd of controversial literature: his chief later work — 
Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion 
(1724) — having called forth no less than thirty-five replies in 
two years. He was also the author of a small book called 
A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty and Ne- 
cessity (17 1 5) — an acute and clearly-written argument in 
favour of the necessitarian solution of the problem. 

In some respects — and these perhaps the most important 
— the most significant work of the whole deistical movement 
was Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation: or, the Gospel, 
a Republication of the Religion oj Nature ( 1 730) . It is no mere 
defence of the use of reason or attack on Christian mysteries. 
It is a masterly presentation of the prevalent philosophical 
ideas of the time and a comparison of them with the rational 
theology which found favour with leaders of the church. 
"The will of God, " said Samuel Clarke, then the most promi- 
nent figure in British philosophy and theology, "always 
determines itself to act according to the eternal reason of 
things," and "all rational creatures are obliged to govern 
themselves in all their actions by the same eternal rule of 
reason." "The religion of the Gospel," said Sherlock, 
preaching a missionary sermon, "is the true original religion 
of reason and nature, " and its precepts are "declarative of 
that original religion which was as old as the creation." 
These extracts Tindal prints on his title-page; and his own 
aim is to show that "natural religion and external revelation, 
like two tallies exactly answer one another, without any 
other difference between them but as to the manner of their 
being delivered." Tindal grasps firmly the principles of 
natural religion, as they were taught by Clarke and Wollas- 
ton and other theologians of the day. Reason convinces us 
of the being and attributes of God, and of the truths of 
morality; the goodness of God makes it impossible that he 



Matthew Tindal 149 

should have concealed from any of his creatures what was 
necessary to their well-being. Christianity, therefore, cannot 
displace deism, as Clarke held that it could : it can only con- 
firm it. And, as reason suffices to establish the truths of 
deism, it would seem that Christianity is superfluous. Tin- 
dal, however, did not expressly draw this conclusion : he was 
seventy years of age when he wrote this book, and he retained 
his fellowship at All Souls, through many changes of govern- 
ment and of personal creed, till his death. 

The remaining deistical writers require only the briefest 
notice. Thomas Woolston was an enthusiast in patristic 
study, and his enthusiasm seems to have verged on insanity 
in his later years. He had two passions — ' ' love of the fathers 
and hatred of the protestant clergy. "* The latter was in- 
tensified by his being deprived of his fellowship at Cambridge ; 
the former led to his allegorical interpretation of Scripture. 
This method he applied to the New Testament miracles, in 
his series of Discourses (1727-30), ridiculing the ordinary 
view of them as actual events. The historical occurrence of 
the miracles was, about the same time, defended by Sherlock 
in The Trial of the Witnesses (1729) ; and to this work Peter 
Annet replied in The Resurrection of Jesus examined by a 
Moral Philosopher (1744), in which the expressions are of an 
open, not to say scandalous, kind rare in the earlier literature 
of deism. Thomas Chubb, an obscure tradesman of Salis- 
bury, with no pretensions to scholarship or education, pub- 
lished a number of tracts in which points of the Scriptures 
were criticised and views similar to those of Tindal asserted. 
The same doctrine was stated once more by Thomas Morgan, 
a physician, in The Moral Philosopher (1737-41). In the 
main he follows Clarke and Tindal; but he also recalls the 
investigations of Toland by the prominence which he gives 
to the opposition between the Judaising and the universal 
factors in early Christianity. Christianity not founded on 
argument, a pamphlet published in 1742 by Henry Dod- 
well (son of a theologian and scholar of the same name), 

1 J. Hunt, Religious Thought in England, ii., p. 40. 



150 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

is one of the latest publications of this school of thought. 
Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury stand in a different rela- 
tion to the deistical movement from that of the writers 
already named. Bolingbroke was not a philosopher, though 
various occasional writings of his were collected and pub- 
* lished by Mallet as Philosophical Works (1752). But he 
illustrates the way in which the fundamental doctrines of 
deism had permeated the thinking of the men of mark in their 
day who were interested in ideas ; and he did much to confirm 
this attitude and to extend its influence. Voltaire regarded 
his views as significant, and the superficial optimism of Pope's 
clear-cut verse, in the Essay on Man, was directly due to 
Bolingbroke. Shaftesbury may have been coupled with 
Bolingbroke as a deist, in the popular mind, and may also 
have lent inspiration to Pope. But he had a far profounder 
view of the problems of thought, which will receive considera- 
tion in connection with the group of writers distinguished as 
moralists. 

The line between deists and churchmen was not always 
drawn very clearly. There was a good deal of common 
ground in the assumptions of both parties; and there was, 
besides, a general ferment of theological thought which dis- 
regarded customary boundaries. The latter characteristic 
is exhibited in the works of William Whiston, mathematician 
and theologian. They were related to the controversy, but 
hardly belong to it. Whiston was a man of active and origi- 
nal mind, which led him outside the established church, but 
in a direction of his own, different from that of Toland or 
Tindal. He was opposed to rationalism, and a believer in 
prophecy and miracle; but he came to the conclusion that 
the Arian heresy represented the true and primitive Christian 
creed. His views are fully developed in Primitive Christianity 
Revived (171 1- 12) ; but they had previously become notorious 
and had led in 17 10 to his being deprived of the Cambridge 
professorship in which he had succeeded Newton. He 
founded a society to promote the true faith, as he held it, and 
composed a revised liturgy for its use; and he wrote on a 



The Two Parties 151 

variety of topics, not all of them theological. His translation 
of Josephus (1 737) , however, has proved of more lasting value 
than his original works. Conyers Middleton, on the other 
hand, showed how near a clergyman might come to the 
deistical position. He was immersed in the controversy, 
and he did something to infuse into it a new historical spirit. 
The whole tendency of his contributions, however, was 
critical and destructive. He separated himself from most 
apologists of the day by denying verbal inspiration ; and he 
examined and rejected the evidence for the ecclesiastical 
miracles in a manner which admitted of wider application. 
This argument is contained in his most important theological 
work, entitled A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers 
which are supposed to have existed in the Christian Church 
through several successive Ages (1748). Of the content of 
religion Middleton takes little account, except as a bulwark 
of the social order. His work shows that interest was drifting 
away from the question of content, from which it had started, 
towards the question of external evidences which suited so 
well the genius of the later eighteenth century. 

Among the opponents of the deists, the two greatest were 
Samuel Clarke and Joseph Butler. Their contributions to 
the thought of the period are reserved for discussion in the 
last section of this chapter. Of the others some have been 
already referred to; most do not call for more than 
bibliographical mention; but one name figures so largely in 
the controversy as to require further notice. By his learning, 
but still more by his mental vigour and resource, William 
Warburton made an impression upon his time which is not 
yet forgotten. He was born in 1698 and died in 1779. Bred 
in a solicitor's office, he took orders without having passed 
through a university, and, after other preferments, became 
bishop of Gloucester in 1 759. He was ready for almost any 
kind of literary work — controversy preferred. He wrote 
The Alliance between Church and State (1736); defended the 
orthodoxy of Pope's Essay on Man; edited Shakespeare 
(1747) ; published a hostile View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philo- 



152 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

sophy (1754), an d had the courage to write Remarks on 
Hume's Natural History of Religion ( 1 757) . His most famous 
work was The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated on the 
Principles of a Religious Deist (1737-41). This vast work, 
which was never completed, was designed to meet a deistical 
objection to the Old Testament Scriptures — that the books 
of Moses contain no reference to the doctrine of a future life. 
An objection of this sort does not seem to have been promi- 
nent in the writings of the greater deists ; but it suited War- 
burton's purpose and enabled him to propound an ingenious 
paradox. He agrees that morality needs the support of a 
belief in a future life of rewards and punishments ; he agrees 
that Moses did not appeal to any such belief or teach any 
such doctrine, although it was common among ancient 
authors of other countries. But just this, he argues, proves 
the divine legation of the lawgiver. The laws of nature are 
an insufficient support for morality; without the belief in a 
future life government cannot be maintained — except by 
miracle. The absence of the belief among the Jews is, there- 
fore, taken as a proof that they were under the immediate 
providence of God, working by means outside natural law. 
The defence of this paradoxical theory gave Warburton 
ample scope for displaying his learning and his controversial 
talent on a great variety of topics, the relevance of which is 
not always apparent. Of his learning, Bentley said that he 
had a "monstrous appetite and bad digestion." His ability 
to get up a case and score a point has been traced to his legal 
training ; a critic of his own day attributed to the same source 
some of the coarser and more violent features of his contro- 
versial method. Of insight into history, philosophy, or re- 
ligion, he does not seem to have had any conspicuous share. 

III. Moralists 

Samuel Clarke was not a man of original genius ; but, by 
sheer intellectual power, he came to occupy a leading posi- 
tion in English philosophy and theology. He touched the 



Samuel Clarke 153 

higher thought of the day at almost every point. The new 
physics, deism, the trinitarian controversy, biblical and 
classical study — all occupied him. Only as to Locke, and 
the new turn which Locke gave to many problems, he never 
defined his position. He was born in 1675 and died in 1729. 
In 1697 he published an annotated Latin translation of the 
Cartesian Rohault's Traite de physique, and thereby pre- 
pared the way, as he intended to do, for the reception of 
Newton's works as text -books at Cambridge; he also trans- 
lated Newton's Optics. In 1699 his controversies with the 
deists began, with Toland's Amyntor for a text. In 1704 and 
1705 he delivered two courses of Boyle Lectures, entitled, 
respectively, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of 
God, and A Discourse concerning the Unchangeable Obligations 
of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Chris- 
tian Revelation. He published editions of Caesar's Commen- 
taries (1712) and Homer's Iliad (1729), as well as many 
books of biblical exegesis. His treatise entitled The Scripture 
Doctrine of the Trinity (1712) brought upon him the accusa- 
tion of Arianism, and led to trouble with Convocation. In 
1 71 5-1 6 he was engaged in a controversy with Leibniz, which 
arose from a comment of the latter on a remark of Newton's 
in which space was spoken of as the sensorium of God, 
branched out into fundamental questions of metaphysics 
and came to an end only with the death of the German 
philosopher. 

Clarke's Boyle Lectures may be safely reckoned his 
greatest work. They contain little that is strikingly new; 
but the arrangement of the separate points and the logical 
consecutiveness of the whole are masterly; and they show, 
nearly always, an elevation of tone and clearness of phrase 
which were often lacking in the controversies of the age. 
Clarke arranges his argument in a series of propositions 
which he first states and then proceeds to demonstrate ; but 
otherwise he did not imitate mathematical method, as Des- 
cartes and Spinoza had done. Nor did he, like Descartes, 
rely on the purely ontological argument. He argued from 



154 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

existence not from idea: maintaining that there must be a 
self -existent being to account for existing things, and then 
going on to show the attributes which must belong to this 
self-existent being. When he has to prove that intelligence 
and wisdom are among these attributes, he relies expressly 
on a posteriori reasoning. The whole argument — therein 
resembling Locke's — belongs to the cosmological variety. 
Clarke's system has been represented as only a less logical 
Spinozism; but the comparison is superficial. One salient 
point of resemblance — the view of space as an attribute of 
God — means something different in the two systems ; for Clarke 
does not identify space with matter. And the method of his 
argument leaves room for the recognition of freedom and for 
a distinction of morality from nature, which were impossible 
for Spinoza. 

Clarke's theory of morality has exerted a more permanent 
influence, and shows more traces of originality, than any of 
his other doctrines. He had an idea of a moral universe con- 
stituted by moral relations, analogous to the physical rela- 
tions of the physical universe. There are certain "fitnesses 
of things" over and above their merely physical relations: 
"there is," he says, "a fitness or suitableness of certain 
circumstances to certain persons, and an unsuitableness of 
others, founded in the nature of things and in the qualities 
of persons, antecedent to will and to all arbitrary or positive 
appointment whatsoever." Many illustrations are given of 
these "relations of things"; but their nature is not further 
explained. "Fitness," "agreement," "suitableness" are 
the terms by which they are described. They differ, there- 
fore, from the causal relations with which physical science is 
concerned. They indicate a different aspect — the moral 
aspect — of reality. But they are known in the same way — 
by reason. As they are in themselves, so they appear to)be 
to the understanding of all intelligent beings. And, so far as 
they are intelligent, all reasonable beings guide their conduct 
by them. God is a free being; but, being rational, it is im- 
possible that he can act against them : he is, therefore, neces- 



Clarke's Ethical Theory 155 

sarily good. The same relations ought to determine human 
conduct ; but the will of man is deflected by his passions and 
particular interests, and his understanding is imperfect, so 
that moral error is possible and common. For this reason 
also the obligation of virtue needs the support of religion. 

Clarke thus gave a new reading of an old doctrine. The 
view that morality is not arbitrary, but belongs to the order 
of the universe, had found frequent expression in theories 
of "the law of nature"; Cud worth, influenced by Platonic 
idealism, had insisted that the nature or essence of things is 
immutable, and that good and evil are qualities which belong 
to that essence ; Clarke goes one step further in holding that 
goodness is a certain congruity of one thing with another, or 
rather of a person with a thing — a relation as eternal as is the 
nature of the things. * But he gave no further definition of 
this congruity, beyond the description of it by a variety of 
terms. That it needed very careful statement became ob- 
vious from some of the consequences drawn by his followers. 
His views were defended, against the first of a new school of 
psychological moralists, by John Balguy, in The Foundation 
of Moral Goodness (172 7-8) . Still earlier, William Wollaston, 
in his Religion of Nature delineated (1722), had given point 
to the intellectualism of the moral theory propounded by 
Clarke. What Clarke had called "fitness" was interpreted 

1 Clarke does not refer to Locke; but both seem to have, been influenced 
by Cudworth, and their views may be compared. Both held (1) that moral 
relations are apprehended intuitively; (2) that they are to be conceived as laws 
of God ; (3) that they need reinforcement by religious sanctions. They differ, 
however, in the way in which they would have interpreted the second point. 
Locke speaks, indeed, of the ideas of God and ourselves as the "foundations of 
our duty"; but his examples of moral rules do not in any way involve the idea 
of God (Essay, iv., iii., 18). Clarke, on the other hand, attempts to show "how 
the nature and will of God himself must be necessarily good and just, " and he 
holds that the difference between good and evil is "antecedent to all laws" 
(Being and Attributes, p. 125) — whereas Locke's notion of moral good and evil 
depends upon a reference to law (ii., xxviii., 5). He would have agreed with 
Locke's statement that moral knowledge is concerned with "the congruity and 
incongruity of the things themselves" (iii., xi., 16), but Locke's reason for this 
statement — that these "moral things," being "mixed modes," are of "man's 
making" (iii., xi., 15) — would not have satisfied him. 



156 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

by him as an actual existing relation or quality. A wrong 
act he held to be simply the assertion in conduct of a false 
proposition. Thus, "if a man steals a horse and rides away 
upon him, " he does not "consider him as being what he is," 
namely, another man's horse; and "to deny things to be as 
they are is the transgression of the great law of our nature, 
the law of reason." Bentham's criticism of this is hardly a 
caricature: "if you were to murder your own father, this 
would only be a particular way of saying he was not your 
father." 

A more fruitful line of ethical thought was entered upon 
by Clarke's contemporary, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, 
grandson of the first earl, Locke's patron, and himself edu- 
cated under Locke's supervision. He was debarred by weak 
health from following an active political career, and his life 
was thus mainly devoted to intellectual interests. After two 
or three unhappy years of school life at Winchester, he 
travelled abroad, chiefly in Italy, with a tutor; in early man- 
hood he resided in Holland ; in later life his health drove him 
to Italy once more. He was an ardent student of the classics, 
especially of Plato, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, a de- 
votee of liberty in thought and in political affairs, and an 
amateur of art — at once a philosopher and a virtuoso. His 
writings were published in three volumes, entitled Charac- 
teristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, in 1711; a 
second edition, carefully revised and enlarged, was ready at 
the time of his death in 17 13. Several of the treatises com- 
prised in these volumes had been previously published. The 
most important of them, An Inquiry concerning Virtue, or 
Merit, was surreptitiously printed from an early draft, in 
1699, by Toland — whom he had befriended and financed; 
The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody appeared in 1709; 
A Letter concerning Enthusiasm in 1708; Sensus Communis: 
an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour in 1 709 ; Soliloquy: 
or Advice to an Author in 1710. Two of the treatises in later 
editions were posthumous : A Notion of the Historical Draught 
or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules, 1713, and Mis- 



The Earl of Shaftesbury 157 

cellaneous Reflections, 1714. Long afterwards, a work en- 
titled Philosophical Regimen was published in 1900, and a 
volume of Second Characters or the Language of Forms in 191 3. 
Shaftesbury's style is nearly always clear, and it has the 
great merit of avoiding traditional technicalities; but it is 
over-polished and often artificial — too "genteel," as Lamb 
said. Its decorations pleased contemporary taste; but the 
rhapsodies of The Moralists fall coldly on the modern ear, 
and the virtuoso has obscured the philosopher. 

Shaftesbury was reckoned among the deists, and per- 
haps not without reason, though his first publication was an 
introduction to the sermons of Whichcote, the Cambridge 
Platonist, and he remained a churchman to the end. His 
sympathies were with that spiritual view of the world which 
is common to Christianity and to Plato and Marcus Aurelius. 
He had no taste for the refinements of theological contro- 
versy or for modern religious fanaticisms. He hated still 
more the method of suppressing the latter by persecution; 
and this led to his suggestion that they would be better met 
if their absurdities were left to ridicule. He never said that 
ridicule was the test of truth ; but he did regard it as a specific 
against superstition ; and some of his comments, in illustra- 
tion of this thesis, not unnaturally gave offence. He himself, 
however, was not without enthusiasms, as is shown by his 
concern for the good of his friends and his country and by his 
devotion to his view of truth. 

For him the enemy was the selfish theory of conduct, 
which he found not in Hobbes only but also, in a more in- 
sinuating form, in Locke. His own ethical writings were 
intended to show that the system of man's nature did not 
point to selfishness. There are affections in man which have 
regard to his own interest or happiness; but there are also 
social (or, as he calls them, natural) affections which are 
directed to the good of the species to which he belongs ; and 
he labours to prove that there is no conflict between the two 
systems. And the mind of man has a still higher reach. 
"The natural affection of a rational creature " will take in the 



158 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

universe, so that he will love all things that have being in 
the world: for, in the universal design of things, "nothing is 
supernumerary or unnecessary"; "the whole is harmony, 
the numbers entire, the music perfect." Further, the mind 
of man is itself in harmony with the cosmic orderC^Connate 
\ in it is a "sense of right and wrong, " to which Shaftesbury 
^ gives the name "the moral sense^i And it is for his doctrine 
of the moral sense that he is now most often remembered. 
In his own century his writings attained remarkable popu- 
larity : Berkeley (in Alciphron) was one of his severest critics. 
Leibniz and Diderot were among his warmest admirers. 

The doctrine of the moral sense led to immediate de- 
velopment, especially at the hands of Francis Hutcheson. 
Hutcheson, a native of Ulster, was educated at the Uni- 
versity of Glasgow, and in 1729 returned there as professor 
of moral philosophy. Among the more notable British 
philosophers he was the first to occupy a professor's chair; 
and his lectures are said by Dugald Stewart "to have con- 
tributed very powerfully to diffuse, in Scotland, that taste 
for analytical discussion, and that spirit of liberal enquiry, 
to which the world is indebted for some of the most valuable 
productions of the eighteenth century." Before his appoint- 
ment as professor Hutcheson had published two volumes — 
An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue 
(1 725), and An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of thePassions 
and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (1726) — 
each containing two treatises. Text-books on logic, meta- 
physics, and ethics followed ; his System of Moral Philosophy 
(1755) was published after his death. The ideas of Shaftes- 
bury reappear in these works in a somewhat more systematic 
form, but without his metaphysical basis and with an in- 
creased tendency towards a psychological interpretation of 
them. Hutcheson maintained the disinterestedness of bene- 
volence ; he assimilated moral and aesthetic judgments ; he 
elaborated the doctrine of the moral sense, sometimes speak- 
ing of it as merely a new source of pleasure or pain ; and he 
identified virtue with universal benevolence : in the tendency 



< 



Francis Hutcheson 159 

towards general happiness he found the standard of goodness. 
In this respect he was historically the forerunner of the utili- 
tarians. In his first work he even used the formula — "the 
greatest happiness for the greatest numbers" — afterwards, 
with only a slight verbal change, made famous by Bentham. 1 
He anticipated Bentham, also, in the attempt to form a 
calculus of pleasures and pains. 

Hutcheson 's first work was described on the title-page 
as a defence of Shaftesbury against the author of The Fable 
of the Bees. In 1705 Bernard Mandeville, a Dutch physician 
resident in London, had published a pamphlet of some four 
hundred lines of doggerel verse entitled The Grumbling Hive, 
or Knaves Turrtd Honest. This was republished as a volume 
in 1 7 14, together with "an inquiry into the original of moral 
virtue" and "remarks" on the original verses, and again in 
1723 with further additions — the whole bearing the title 
The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices, Public Benefits. 
Mandeville marks a reaction against the too facile optimism 
which was common with the deists and to which Shaftesbury 
gave philosophical expression, and against the conventions 
associated with popular morality. But he did not draw nice 
distinctions : convention and morality are equally the objects 
of his satire. He was clever enough to detect the luxury and 
vice that gather round the industrial system, and perverse 
enough to mistake them for its foundation. He reverted to 
Hobbes's selfish theory of human nature, but was without 
Hobbes's grasp of the principle of order. He looked upon 
man as a compound of various passions, governed by each 
as it comes uppermost, and he held that "the moral virtues 
are the political offspring which flattery begot upon pride." 
The combination of ability and coarseness with which this 

1 Hutcheson, Inquiry, p. 164. Although Bentham thought and said ( Works, 
x., 46, 142) that he got the formula from Priestley, it is not to be found in 
Priestley's works, and was, almost certainly, taken from Beccaria. Beccaria's 
words (Dei Delitti e delle Pene, 1764) were la massima felicitd divisa nel maggior 
numero, and these were rendered in the English translation (1767) by "the 
greatest happiness of the greatest number" — the exact words which Bentham 
first used in 1 776. The dependence of Beccaria on Hutcheson is not established. 



160 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

view was developed led to many other answers than Hutche- 
son's. Berkeley replied in Alciphron^nd William Law, as 
his manner was, went to the heart of the matter in a brilliant 
pamphlet, Remarks upon a late book, entituled The Fable of the 
Bees (1723). Law also made his mark in the deist contro- 
versy by The Case of Reason (1731), a reply to Tindal, in 
which he anticipated the line of argument soon afterwards 
worked out by Butler. 

Joseph Butler, bishop of Durham during the last two 
years (1750-52) of his life, did not make any contributions 
to pure metaphysics; but his is the greatest name both in 
the theological and in the ethical thought of the period. He 
published two books only — a volume of Fifteen Sermons 
(1726), which (in particular, the first three sermons, entitled 
"on human nature") express his ethical system, and The 
Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution 
and Course of Nature (1736). These works are without any 
pretensions to literary elegance ; and it is only in rare passages 
that the usually sombre style glows with the fire of restrained 
eloquence. But they are compact of profound thought. The 
names of other writers are rarely mentioned; but all their 
arguments have been considered; no difficulties are slurred 
over, and no opinion is accepted without being probed to the 
bottom. There is an air of completeness and finality about 
the reasoning, which needs no grace of diction. 

Butler's condensed and weighty argument hardly ad- 
mits of summary. Yet his view of things as a whole may 
be expressed in the one word "teleological." Human nature 
is a system or constitution ; the same is true of the world at 
large ; and both point to an end or purpose. This is his guid- 
ing idea, suggested by Shaftesbury, to whom due credit is 
given; and it enables him to rise from a refutation of the 
selfish theory of Hobbes to the truth that man's nature or 
constitution is adapted to virtue. The old argument about 
selfish or disinterested affections is lifted to a higher plane. 
He shows that the characteristic of impulse, or the "particu- 
lar passions," is to seek an object, not to seek pleasure, while 



Joseph Butler 161 

pleasure results from the attainment of the object desired. 
Human nature, however, is not impulsive merely; there are 
also reflective principles by which the tendency of impulses 
is judged and their value appraised. On this level selfishness 
is possible; but self-love is not the only reflective principle 
of conduct ; beside it stands the moral sense or, as Butler pre- 
ferred to call it, conscience. The claim to rule, or "super- 
intendency" (a point overlooked by Shaftesbury), is of the 
very nature of conscience; and, although Butler labours to 
prove the harmony of the dictates of the two principles, it is 
to conscience that he assigns ultimate authority. It is true 
that, in an oft-quoted sentence, he admits "that when we 
sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves 
this [i.e., moral rectitude] or any other pursuit, till we are 
convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at least not 
contrary to it." But, even if we disregard the "let it be 
allowed" that introduces the admission, the single sentence 
is hardly sufficient to justify the assertion that Butler held 
the authority of self-love to be equal to, or higher than, that 
of conscience. The passage is, rather, a momentary con- 
cession to the selfish spirit of the age ; and it has to be inter- 
preted in the light of his frequent assertions of the natural 
superiority of conscience. "To preside and govern, from the 
very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it," he 
says. ' ' Had it strength as it has right, had it power as it has 
manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world." 

Since the essence of human nature is expressed in this 
spiritual principle, Butler is able to justify the assertion 
that man is adapted to virtue. But here his ethics may be 
said almost to stop short. He does not explain further the 
nature of conscience in relation to reason and will, or derive 
from it, in any systematic way, the content of morality. 
In his first work the conduct approved by conscience seemed 
to be identified with benevolent actions or such as aimed at 
the common good. But in the "Dissertation on Virtue" 
appended to The Analogy, he took a different view. "With- 
out enquiring how far, and in what sense, virtue is resolvable 



1 62 Berkeley and his Contemporaries 

into benevolence, " he maintained that "we are so constituted 
as to condemn falsehood, unprovoked violence, injustice, 
and to approve of benevolence to some preferably to others, 
abstracted from all consideration which conduct is likeliest 
to produce an overbalance of happiness or misery." Butler 
did not work out a system ; he was distrustful of any attempt 
at a complete philosophy, and resigned to accept probability 
as the guide of life. 

The same fundamental conception and the same limita- 
tion reappear in Butler's still more famous work, The Analogy. 
The world is a system — "a scheme in which means are made 
use of to accomplish ends, and which is carried on by general 
laws." It is neglect of this truth which makes men think 
that particular instances of suffering virtue or successful 
vice are inconsistent with "the wisdom, justice, and goodness 
of the constitution of nature." In the constitution and 
government of the world, nature and morality are so closely 
connected as to form a single scheme, in which "it is highly 
probable that the first is formed and carried on merely in 
subserviency to the latter." The imperfections of our 
knowledge make it impossible to demonstrate this in detail. 
But grant, as the deists granted, that God is the author of 
nature, and it can then be shown that there is no difficulty 
in the doctrines of religion, whether natural or revealed, 
which has not a parallel difficulty in the principle common 
to both sides in the argument. This is the analogy to the 
establishment of which in detail Butler's reasonings are 
directed. They are so exhaustive, so thorough, and so candid, 
that critics of all schools are agreed in regarding his as the 
final word in a great controversy. 



CHAPTER VIII 
David Hume 

OF David Hume and Adam Smith it has been truthfully- 
said that ' ' there was no third person writing the Eng- 
lish language during the same period, who has had so 
much influence upon the opinions of mankind as either of 
these two men. " x There were many other writers on the 
same or cognate subjects, who made important contributions 
to the literature of thought; but Hume and Adam Smith 
tower above them all both in intellectual greatness and in 
the permanent influence of their work. 

In the sketch of his Own Life, which he wrote a few 
months before his death, Hume says that he was " seized 
very early with a passion for literature, which has been the 
ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoy- 
ments." Another document of much earlier date (1734), 
which Hume himself revealed to no one, but which has been 
discovered and printed by his biographer, 2 gives us a clear 
insight into the nature of this literary ambition and of the 
obstacles to its satisfaction. This is his own account of his 
motive and aims: "As our college education in Scotland, 
extending little further than the languages, ends commonly 
when we are about fourteen or fifteen years of age, I was 
after that left to my own choice in my reading, and found it 
incline me almost equally to books of reasoning and philo- 

1 J. H. Burton, Life and Correspondence of David Hume, i., p. 117. 
2 Ibid.,i. f pp. 30-39- 

163 



1 64 David Hume 

sophy, and to poetry and the polite authors. Every one who 
is acquainted either with the philosophers or critics, knows 
that there is nothing yet established in either of these two 
sciences, and that they contain little more than endless dis- 
putes, even in the most fundamental articles. Upon examina- 
tion of these, I found a certain boldness of temper growing 
in me, which was not inclined to submit to any authority in 
these subjects, but led me to seek out some new medium by 
which truth might be established. After much study and 
reflection on this, at last, when I was about eighteen years 
of age, there seemed to be opened up to me a new scene of 
thought, which transported me beyond measure, and made 
me, with an ardour natural to young men, throw up every 
other pleasure or business to apply entirely to it. . . . 
Having now time and leisure to cool my inflamed imagina- 
tion, I began to consider seriously how I should proceed in 
my philosophical inquiries. I found that . . . every one 
consulted his fancy in erecting schemes of virtue and of 
happiness, without regarding human nature, upon which 
every moral conclusion must depend. This, therefore, I 
resolved to make my principal study, and the source from 
which I would derive every truth in criticism as well as 
morality." These passages show, not only that Hume's 
ambition was entirely literary, but also that his literary 
ambition was centred in philosophy and that he was con- 
vinced he held in his grasp a key to its problems. Literary 
ambition never ceased to be Hume's ruling passion, and it 
brought him fame and even affluence. But his early en- 
thusiasm for the discovery of truth seems to have been 
damped by the reception of his first and greatest work, or by 
the intellectual contradiction to which his arguments led, 
or by both causes combined. In philosophy he never made 
any real advance upon his first work, A Treatise of Human 
Nature; his later efforts were devoted to presenting its argu- 
ments in a more perfect and more popular literary form, or to 
toning down their destructive results, and to the application 
of his ideas to questions of economics, politics, and religion, 



Hume's Ruling Passion 165 

as well as to winning a new reputation for himself in historical 
composition. 

His career contained few incidents that need to be re- 
corded beyond the publication of his books. He was born 
at Edinburgh on 26 April, 171 1 , the younger son of a country 
gentleman of good family but small property. His "passion 
for literature ' ' led to his early desertion of the study of law ; 
when he was twenty-three, he tried commerce as a cure for 
the state of morbid depression in which severe study had 
landed him, and also, no doubt, as a means of livelihood. 
But, after a few months in a merchant's office at Bristol, he 
resolved to make frugality supply his deficiency of fortune, 
and settled in France, chiefly at La Fleche, where, more than 
a century before, Descartes had been educated at the Jesuit 
college. But he never mentions this connection with Des- 
cartes ; he was occupied with other thoughts ; and, after three 
years, in 1737, he came home to arrange for the publication 
of A Treatise of Human Nature, the first two volumes of 
which appeared in January, 1739. If the book did not liter- 
ally, as Hume put it, fall "dead-born from the press," it 
excited little attention; the only literary notice it received 
entirely failed to appreciate its significance. He was bitterly 
disappointed, but continued the preparation for the press of 
his third volume, ' ' Of Morals. ' ' This appeared in 1 740 ; and 
in 1 741 he published a volume of Essays Moral and Political, 
which reached a second edition and was supplemented by a 
second volume in 1 742. The success of these essays gratified 
Hume's literary ambition, and perhaps had a good deal to do 
with the direction of his activity towards the application and 
popularisation of his reflections rather than to further criti- 
cism of their basis. 

About this time Hume resided, for the most part, at the 
paternal estate (now belonging to his brother) of Ninewells 
in Berwickshire; but he was making efforts to secure an in- 
dependent income: he failed twice to obtain a university 
professorship; he spent a troublesome year as tutor to a 
lunatic nobleman; he accompanied General St. Clair as his 



166 David Hume 

secretary on his expedition to France in 1746, and on a 
mission to Vienna and Turin in 1748. In the latter year was 
published a third volume of Essays Moral and Political, and 
also Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding, 
afterwards (1758) entitled An Enquiry concerning Human 
Understanding, in which the reasonings of book 1 of A Trea- 
tise of Human Nature were presented in a revised but in- 
complete form. A second edition of this work appeared in 
1 75 1, and, in the same year, An Enquiry concerning the 
Principles of Morals (founded upon book in of the Treatise) 
which, in the opinion of the author, was of all his "writings, 
historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably the best." 
A few months later (February, 1752), he published a volume 
of Political Discourses which, he said, was "the only work of 
mine that was successful on the first publication." Accord- 
ing to Burton, 1 it "introduced Hume to the literature of the 
continent." It was translated into French in 1753 and again 
in 1754. In 1752 he was appointed keeper of the advocates' 
library — a post which made a small addition to his modest 
income and enabled him to carry out his historical work. 
In 1753-4 appeared Essays and Treatises on several subjects; 
these included his various writings other than the Treatise 
and the History, and, after many changes, attained their final 
form in the edition of 1777. The new material added to 
them in later editions consisted chiefly of Four Dissertations 
published in 1757. The subjects of these dissertations were 
the natural history of religion, the passions (founded on book 
n of the Treatise), tragedy, and taste. Essays on suicide 
and on immortality had been originally designed for this 
volume, but were hurriedly withdrawn on the eve of publi- 
cation. 

For more than two years, 1763 to 1765, Hume acted as 
secretary to the English embassy at Paris, where he was 
received with extraordinary enthusiasm by the court and by 
literary society. "Here," he wrote, "I feed on ambrosia, 
drink nothing but nectar, breathe incense only, and walk on 

1 Life and Correspondence of Hume, i., p. 365. 



Life and Writings 167 

flowers." He returned to London in January, 1766, accom- 
panied by Rousseau, whom he had befriended and who, a 
few months later, repaid his kindness by provoking one of the 
most famous of quarrels between men of letters. Before the 
close of the year he was again in Scotland, but, in the follow- 
ing year, was recalled to London as under-secretary of state, 
and it was not till 1 769 that he finally settled in Edinburgh. 
There he rejoined a society less brilliant and original than 
that he had left in Paris, but possessed of a distinction of its 
own. Prominent among his friends were Robertson, Hugh 
Blair, and others of the clergy — men of high character and 
literary reputation, and representative of a religious attitude, 
known in Scotland as "moderatism, " x which did not disturb 
the serenity of Hume. He died on 25 August, 1776. 

After his death his Own Life was published by Adam 
Smith (1777), and his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion 
by his nephew David (1779). We hear of these Dialogues 
more than twenty years earlier; but he was dissuaded from 
publishing them at the time, though he was concerned that 
they should not be lost and subjected the manuscript to 
repeated and careful revision. His philosophical activity 
may be said to have come to an end in 1757 with the publica- 
tion of Four Dissertations, when he was forty-six years old. 
In spite of many criticisms he refused to be drawn into con- 
troversy; but, in an " advertisement" to the final edition of 
Essays and Treatises, he protested with some irritation 
against criticisms of A Treatise of Human Nature — "the 
juvenile work which the Author never acknowledged." 

This disclaimer of his earliest and greatest work is in- 
teresting as a revelation of Hume's character, but cannot 
affect philosophical values. If he had written nothing else, 
and this book alone had been read, the influence of his ideas 
on general literature would have been less marked; but his 
claim to rank as the greatest of English philosophers would 
not be seriously affected : it would be recognised that he had 

1 For a definition of "moderatism" by an observer of its decline, see Lord 
Cockburn's Journal, ii., pp. 289-291. 



1 68 David Hume 

carried out a line of thought to its final issue, and the effect 
upon subsequent speculation would have been, in essentials, 
what it has been. 

Hume is quite clear as to the method of his enquiry. He 
recognised that Locke and others had anticipated him in the 
"attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning 
into moral subjects." Locke had also opened the way for 
deriving a system of philosophy from the science of the 
human mind ; but Hume far excelled him in the thoroughness 
and consistency with which he followed this way. Locke's 
express purpose was to examine the understanding that he 
might discover "the utmost extent of its tether." He does 
not doubt that knowledge can signify a reality outside the 
mind ; but he wishes to determine the range of this cognitive 
power. From the outset Hume conceives the problem in a 
wider manner. All knowledge is a fact or process of human 
nature; if we are able, therefore, "to explain the principles 
of human nature," we shall "in effect propose a complete 
system of the sciences." Without doubt this utterance points 
back to his early discovery of a "new medium by which truth 
might be established" — a discovery which, at the age of 
eighteen, had transported him beyond measure. In saying 
that "a complete system of the sciences" would result from 
"the principles of human nature, " Hume did not mean that 
the law of gravitation or the circulation of the blood could be 
discovered from an examination of the understanding and 
the emotions. His meaning was that, when the sciences are 
brought into system, certain general features are found to 
characterise them; and the explanation of these general 
features is to be sought in human nature — in other words, in 
our ways of knowing and feeling. His statement, accord- 
ingly, comes simply to this, that mental science, or what we 
now call psychology, takes the place of philosophy — is itself 
philosophy. 

Hume is commonly, and correctly, regarded as having 
worked out to the end the line of thought started by Locke. 
But, in the width of his purpose, the thoroughness of its 



Method of Enquiry 169 

elaboration, and his clear consciousness of his task, he may 
be compared with Hobbes — a writer who had little direct 
effect upon his thought. For Hume is Hobbes inverted. 
The latter interprets the inner world — the world of life and 
thought — by means of the external or material world, whose 
impact gives rise to the motions which we call perception and 
volition. Hume, on the other hand, will assume nothing 
about external reality, but interprets it by means of the im- 
pressions or ideas of which we are all immediately conscious. 
And, as Hobbes saw all things under the rule of mechanical 
law, so Hume also has a universal principle of connection. 
"Here," he says, that is to say, among ideas, "is a kind of 
Attraction, which in the mental world will be found to have 
as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and to shew itself 
in as many and as various forms." The law of gravitation 
finds its parallel in the law of the association of ideas ; as the 
movements of masses are explained by the former, so the 
latter is used to account for the grouping of mental 
phenomena. 

In enumerating these mental facts he modifies the 
doctrine of Locke. According to Locke the material of 
knowledge comes from two different sources — sensation and 
reflection. The view hardly admitted of statement without 
postulating both a mental and a material world existing over 
against one another. Hume tries to avoid any such postulate. 
His primary data are all of one kind; he calls them "impres- 
sions, " and says that they arise "from unknown causes." 
Ideas are distinguished from impressions by their lesser 
degree of ' ' force and liveliness . ' ' Hume makes the generalisa- 
tion that "every simple idea has a simple impression which 
resembles it"; an idea is thus the "faint image" of an 
impression ; and there are degrees of this faintness : the "more 
lively and strong " are ideas of memory, the weaker are ideas 
of imagination. Further, certain ideas, in some unexplained 
way, reappear with the force and liveliness of impressions, 
or, as Hume puts it, "produce the new impressions" which 
he calls "impressions of reflection " and which he enumerates 



170 David Hume 

as passions, desires, and emotions. Reflection is thus derived 
from sensation, although its impressions in their turn give 
rise to new ideas. All mental facts (in Hume's language, all 
"perceptions") are derived from sense-impressions, and 
these arise from unknown causes. Simple ideas are dis- 
tinguished from simple impressions merely by their com- 
parative lack of force and liveliness; but these fainter data 
tend to group themselves in an order different from that of 
their corresponding impressions. By this "association of 
ideas" are formed the complex ideas of relations, modes, 
and substances. 

Such are the elements of Hume's account of human 
nature; out of these elements he has to explain knowledge 
and morality ; and this explanation is, at the same time, to be 
"a complete system of the sciences." He is fully alive to 
the problem. In knowledge ideas are connected together by 
other relations than the "association" which rules imagina- 
tion; and he proceeds at once to an enquiry into "all those 
qualities which make objects admit of comparison." These 
he calls "philosophical relations," and he arranges them 
under seven general heads : resemblance, identity, space and 
time, quantity, degree of quality, contrariety, cause and 
effect. 

All scientific propositions are regarded as expressing one 
or other of these relations. Hume regards the classification 
as exhaustive; and, at least, it is sufficient to form a com- 
prehensive test of his theory. Since we have nothing to go 
upon but ideas and the impression from which ideas originate, 
how are we to explain knowledge of these relations ? Hume's 
enquiry did not answer this question even to his own satis- 
faction; but it set a problem which has had to be faced by 
every subsequent thinker, and it has led many to adopt the 
sceptical conclusion in which the author himself finally 
landed. 

The "philosophical relations," under his analysis, fall 
into two groups. On the one hand, some of them depend 
entirely on the ideas compared ; these are resemblance, con- 



Philosophical Relations 171 

trariety, degrees in quality, and proportions in quantity 
or number. On the other hand, the relations of identity, 
space and time, and causation may be changed without any 
change in the ideas related; our knowledge of them thus 
presents an obvious difficulty, for it cannot be derived from 
the ideas themselves. Hume does not take much trouble 
with the former class of relations, in which this difficulty 
does not arise. He is content to follow on Locke's lines and 
to think that general propositions of demonstrative certainty 
are obviously possible here, seeing that we are merely stating 
a relationship clearly apparent in the ideas themselves. He 
does not ask whether the relation is or is not a new idea, and, 
if it is, how it can be explained — from what impression it 
took its rise. And he gives no explanation of the fixed and 
permanent character attributed to an idea when it is made 
the subject of a universal proposition. 

It is important to note, however, that he does not follow 
Locke in holding that mathematics is a science which is at 
once demonstrative and "instructive." The propositions of 
geometry concern spatial relations, and our idea of space is 
received "from the disposition of visible and tangible ob- 
jects" ; we have "no idea of space or extension but when we 
regard it as an object either of our sight or feeling" (i.e., 
touch) ; and in these perceptions we can never attain exact- 
ness: "our appeal is still to the weak and fallible judgment 
which we make from the appearance of the objects, and 
correct by a compass or common measure." Geometry, 
therefore, is an empirical science; it is founded on observa- 
tions of approximate accuracy only, though the variations 
from the normal in our observations may be neutralised in 
the general propositions which we form. Hume did not 
apply the same doctrine to arithmetic, on the ground (which 
his principles do not justify) that the unit is something 
unique. He was thus able to count quantity and number 
in his first class of relations and to except algebra and arith- 
metic from the effect of his subtle analysis of the foundations 
of geometry. In his Enquiry concerning Human Under- 



172 David Hume 

standing, however, he deserts, without a word of justification, 
the earlier view which he had worked out with much care 
and ingenuity, and treats mathematics generally as the great 
example of demonstrative reasoning. In this later work, in 
which completeness is sacrificed to the presentation of salient 
features, he speaks, not of two kinds of relations, but of 
"relations of ideas" and "matters of fact"; and, in each, 
he seeks to save something from the general ruin of the 
sciences to which his premisses lead. The last paragraph 
of the book sets forth his conclusion: "When we run over 
our libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must 
we make ? If we take in our hand any volume ; of divinity 
or school metaphysics, for instance ; let us ask, Does it contain 
any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. 
Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter 
of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames ; for 
it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." 

This passage, startling and ruthless as it sounds, is chiefly 
remarkable for its reservations. It was easy to condemn 
"divinity or school metaphysics" as illusory; they had for 
long been common game. But to challenge the validity of 
mathematics or of natural science was quite another matter. 
Hume did not temper the wind to the shorn lamb; but he 
took care that it should not visit too roughly the sturdy 
wethers of the flock. Yet we have seen that, according to his 
principles, mathematics rests upon observations which fall 
short of accuracy, while natural science, with its "experi- 
mental reasoning concerning matter of fact, " depends upon 
the relation of cause and effect. 

The examination of this relation occupies a central posi- 
tion in both his works; and its influence upon subsequent 
thought has been so great as sometimes to obscure the im- 
portance of other factors in his philosophy. He faced a 
problem into which Locke had hardly penetrated, and of 
which even Berkeley had had only a partial view. What 
do we mean when we say that one thing is cause and another 
thing its effect, and what right have we to that meaning? 



Relations and Matters of Fact 173 

In sense-perception we have impressions of flame and of heat, 
for instance; but why do we say that the flame causes the 
heat, what ground is there for asserting any "necessary con- 
nection" between them? The connection cannot be derived 
from any comparison of the ideas of flame and of heat ; it must 
come from impression, therefore; but there is no separate 
impression of "cause" or "causation" which could serve as 
the link between two objects. What then is the origin of the 
connection? To use the terminology of the Enquiry, since 
cause is not a "relation of ideas," it must be a "matter of 
fact ' ' — an impression. But it is not itself a separate or simple 
impression ; it must therefore be due to the mode or manner 
in which impressions occur. In our experience we are accus- 
tomed to find flame and heat combined ; we pass constantly 
from one to the other; and the custom becomes so strong 
that, whenever the impression of flame occurs, the idea of 
heat follows. Then we mistake this mental or subjective 
connection for an objective connection ."""Necessary connec- 
tion is not in the objects, but only in the mind; yet custom 
is too strong for us, and we attribute it to the objects. 

This is a simple statement of the central argument of 
Hume's most famous discussion. The "powers" which 
Locke attributed to bodies must be denied — as Berkeley 
denied them. The consciousness of spiritual activity on 
which Berkeley relied is equally illusory on Hume's prin- 
ciples. " If we reason a priori, ' ' says Hume, ' ' anything may 
appear able to produce anything. The falling of a pebble 
may, for ought we know, extinguish the sun, or the wish of a 
man control the planets in their orbits. ' ' This striking utter- 
ance is, strictly, little better than a truism. No philosopher 
ever supposed that such knowledge about definite objects 
could be got in any other way than by experience. But 
Hume's negative criticism goes much deeper than this. We 
have no right to say that the extinction of the sun needs any 
cause at all, or that causation is a principle that holds of 
objects; all events are loose and separate. The only connec- 
tion which we have a right to assert is that of an idea with an 



174 David Hume 

impression or with other ideas — the subjective routine which 
is called ' ' association of ideas. ' ' Hume's constructive theory 
of causation is an explanation of how we come to suppose 
that there is causal connection in the world, although there 
is really nothing more than customary association in our 
minds. 

If we admit Hume's fundamental assumption about 
impressions and ideas, it is impossible to deny the general 
validity of this reasoning. Any assertion of a causal con- 
nection — the whole structure of natural science therefore — 
is simply a misinterpretation of certain mental processes. 
At the outset Hume himself had spoken of impressions as 
arising from "unknown causes" ; and some expressions of the 
sort were necessary to give his theory a start and to carry the 
reader along with him; but they are really empty words. 
Experience is confined to impressions and ideas ; causation is 
an attitude towards them produced by custom — by the mode 
of sequence of our perceptions ; its applicability is only within 
the range of impressions or ideas ; to talk of an impression as 
caused by something that is neither impression nor idea may 
have a very real meaning for any philosopher except Hume ; 
but for Hume it cannot have any meaning at all. 

The discussion of causation brings out another and still 
more general doctrine held by Hume — his theory of belief. 
When I say that flame causes heat, I do not refer to a connec- 
tion of ideas in my own mind ; I am expressing belief in an 
objective connection independent of my mental processes. 
But Hume's theory of causation reduces the connection to 
a subjective routine. Now, some other impression than 
"flame" might precede the idea of heat — the impression 
"cold," for instance. How is it, then, that I do not assert 
"cold causes heat?" The sequence "cold — heat" may be 
equally real in my mind with the sequence "flame — heat." 
How is it that the former does not give rise to belief in the 
way that the latter does? Hume would say that the only 
difference is that the association in the former case is less 
direct and constant than in the latter (in which the associa- 



The Analysis of Causation 175 

tion had been set a-going by the repeated sequence of im- 
pression upon impression), and thus leads to an idea of less 
force and liveliness. Belief, accordingly, is simply a lively 
idea associated with a present impression. It belongs to the 
sensitive, not to the rational, part of our nature. And yet it 
marks the fundamental distinction between judgment and 
imagination. 

In the Treatise, at any rate, there is no faltering of purpose 
or weakening of power when the author proceeds to apply his 
principles to the fabric of knowledge. It is impossible, in this 
place, to follow his subtle and comprehensive argument ; but 
its issue is plain. With objections not unlike Berkeley's he 
dismisses the independent existence of bodies, and then he 
turns a similar train of reasoning against the reality of the 
self: ''When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, 
I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of 
heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. 
I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, 
and never can observe anything but the perception. When 
my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, 
so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not 
to exist." 1 According to Hume's own illustration, the mind 
is but the stage on which perceptions pass and mingle and 
glide away. Or rather, there is no stage at all, but only a 
phantasmagory of impressions and ideas. 

Hume's purpose was constructive; but the issue, as he 
faces it, is sceptical. And he is a genuine sceptic; for even 
as to his scepticism he is not dogmatic. Why should he 
assent to his own reasoning? he asks; and he answers, "I can 
give no reason why I should assent to it, and feel nothing but 
a strong propensity to consider objects strongly in that view." 
The propensity, however, is strong only when the "bent of 
mind" is in a certain direction; a dinner, a game of back- 
gammon, makes such speculations appear ridiculous; and 
"nature" suffices to "obliterate all these chimeras." A 
year later Hume referred again to this sceptical impasse, 

1 A Treatise of Human Nature, i, iv., 6. 



176 David Hume 

in an appendix to the third volume of his Treatise 1 ; and 
there, with remarkable insight, he diagnosed the causes of 
his own failure. The passage deserves quotation, seeing 
that it has been often overlooked and is, nevertheless, one 
of the most significant utterances in the history of philosophy. 
"In short there are two principles, which I cannot render 
consistent ; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, 
viz. that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and 
that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct 
existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something 
simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real 
connexion among them, there would be no difficulty in the 
case. For my part, I must plead the privilege of a sceptic, 
and confess that this difficulty is too hard for my under- 
standing. I pretend not, however, to pronounce it abso- 
lutely insuperable. Others, perhaps, or myself, upon more 
mature reflexions, may discover some hypothesis that will 
reconcile those contradictions." Hume himself seems to 
have made no further attempt to solve the problem. His 
followers have been content to build their systems on his 
foundation, with minor improvements of their own, but 
without overcoming or facing the fundamental difficulty 
which he saw and expressed. 

The logical result of his analysis is far from leading to 
that "complete system of the sciences" which he had anti- 
cipated from his "new medium" ; it leads, not to reconstruc- 
tion, but to a sceptical disintegration of knowledge ; and he 
was clearsighted enough to see this result. Thenceforward 
scepticism became the characteristic attitude of his mind 
and of his writings. But his later works exhibit a less 
thorough scepticism than that to which his thinking led. 
Even his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding shows a 
weakening of the sceptical attitude, in the direction of a 
"mitigated scepticism" which resembles modern positivism 
and admits knowledge of phenomena and of mathematical 
relations. 

1 Ed. Green and Grose, i., p. 559; ed. Selby-Bigge, p. 636. 



The Sceptical Result 177 

When he came to deal with concrete problems his prin- 
ciples were often applied in an emasculated form. But the 
"new medium" was not altogether discarded: appeal was 
constantly made to the mental factor — impression and idea. 
This is characteristic of Hume's doctrine of morality . ' ' Here 
is a matter of fact ; but 'tis the object of feeling not of reason. 
It lies in yourself not in the object. " 1 And from this results 
his famous definition of virtue. * ' Every quality of the mind, ' ' 
he says in the Treatise, 2 "is denominated virtuous which 
gives pleasure by the mere survey; as every quality which 
produces pain is called vicious"; or, as he puts it in the En- 
quiry concerning the Principles of Morals, virtue is 4 ' whatever 
mental action or quality gives to the spectator the pleasing 
sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary." The 
"sentiments of approbation or blame," which thus arise, 
depend in all cases on sympathy. Sympathy with the 
pleasures and pains of others is postulated by Hume as an 
ultimate fact; the reasonings of Butler and Hutcheson pre- 
vented him from seeking to account for it as a refined form 
of selfishness, as Hobbes had done ; and yet, upon his own 
premisses, it remains inexplicable. In his Enquiry concerning 
the Principles of Morals his differences from Hobbes, and 
even from Locke, are still more clearly shown than in the 
Treatise; he defends the reality of disinterested benevolence ; 
and the sentiment of moral approbation is described as 
"humanity, " or "a feeling for the happiness of mankind, " 
which, it is said, "nature has made universal in the species." 4 
This sentiment, again, is always direct d towards qualities 
which tend to the pleasure, immediate or remote, of the 
person observed or of others. Thus Hume occupies a place 
in the utilitarian succession; but he did not formulate a 
quantitative utilitarianism, as Hutcheson had already done. 

1 Treatise, m, i., I ; ed. Green and Grose, n, p. 245; ed. Selby-Bigge, p. 469. 

* in, iii., 1 ; ed. Green and Grose, 11, p. 348; ed. Selby-Bigge, p. 591. 

J App. i.; ed. Selby-Bigge, p. 289; Essays, ed. Green and Grose, 11, p. 261. 

* Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, sect. 1 and app. i. ; ed. Selby- 
Bigge, pp. 173, 286; ed. Green and Grose, 11, pp. 172, 259. 



17& David Hume 

He drew an important distinction, however, between natural 
virtues, such as benevolence, which are immediately ap- 
proved and which have a direct tendency to produce pleasure, 
and artificial virtues, of which justice is the type, where both 
the approval and the tendency to pleasure are mediated by 
the social system which the virtue in question supports. 

Hume exerted a profound influence upon theology, not 
only by the general trend of his speculation, but also through 
certain specific writings. The most important of these 
writings are the essay "Of Miracles" contained in An En- 
quiry concerning Human Understanding, the dissertation 
entitled "The Natural History of Religion, " and Dialogues 
concerning Natural Religion. The first-named is the most 
famous ; it produced a crowd of answers, and it had a good 
deal to do with public attention being attracted to the 
author's works. It consists of an expansion of a simple and 
ingenious argument, which had occurred to him when writing 
his Treatise of Human Nature, but which, strangely enough, 
is inconsistent with the principles of that work. It regards 
"laws of nature" as established by a uniform experience, 
"miracles" as violations of these laws, and the evidence for 
miracles as necessarily inferior to the "testimony of the 
senses" which establishes the laws of nature. Whatever 
validity these positions may have on another philosophical 
theory, the meaning both of laws of nature, and of miracles 
as conflicting with these laws, evaporates under the analysis 
by which, as in Hume's Treatise, all events are seen as "loose 
and separate. " " The Natural History of Religion ' ' contains 
reflections of greater significance. Here Hume distinguishes 
between the theoretical argument which leads to theism and 
the actual mental processes from which religion has arisen. 
Its "foundation in reason" is not the same thing as its 
"origin in human nature"; and he made an important step 
in advance by isolating this latter question and treating it 
apart. He held that religion arose "from a concern with 
regard to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes and 
fears which actuate the human mind, " and, in particular, 



The Theory of Morality 179 

from the "melancholy" rather than from the "agreeable" 
passions ; and he maintained the thesis that polytheism pre- 
ceded theism in the historical development of belief. 

"The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable 
mystery." Such is the concluding reflection of this work. 
But a further and serious attempt to solve the riddle is made 
in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. This small 
book contains the author's mature views on ultimate ques- 
tions. It is written in his most perfect style and shows his 
mastery of the dialogue form. There is none of the usual 
scenery of the dramatic dialogue ; but the persons are distinct, 
the reasoning is lucid, and the interest is sustained to the end. 
The traditional arguments are examined with an insight and 
directness which were only equalled afterwards by Kant ; but, 
unlike Kant, and with insight more direct if not more pro- 
found, Hume finds the most serious difficulties of the ques- 
tion in the realm of morals. The form of the work makes it 
not altogether easy to interpret; and some commentators 
have held that Hume's own views should not be identified 
with those of the more extreme critic of theism. Hume 
himself says as much at the close of the work ; but his habitual 
irony in referring to religious topics is part of the difficulty of 
interpretation. All the speakers in the Dialogues are repre- 
sented as accepting some kind of theistic belief ; and it is not 
necessary to attribute expressions of this kind simply to 
irony. The trend of the argument is towards a shadowy 
form of theism — "that the cause or causes of order in the 
universe probably bear some remote analogy to human in- 
telligence " ; and, in a remarkable footnote, the author seems 
to be justifying his own right to take up such a position: 
"No philosophical Dogmatist denies, that there are difficul- 
ties both with regard to the senses and to all science; and 
that these difficulties are in a regular, logical method, ab- 
solutely insolvable. No Sceptic denies, that we lie under an 
absolute necessity, notwithstanding these difficulties, of 
thinking, and believing, and reasoning with regard to all 
kind of subjects, and even of frequently assenting with 



180 David Hume 

confidence and security." In other words, his logic leads to 
complete scepticism; but, just because the "difficulties" 
are insoluble, he claims a right to disregard them, and to 
act and think like other men, when action and thought are 
called for. 

For this reason his theory of knowledge has little effect 
upon his political and economical essays, although these 
are closely connected with his ethical and psychological 
views. The separate essays were published, in various vol- 
umes, between 1741 and 1777; and, in the interval, politi- 
cal philosophy was profoundly influenced by the works of 
Montesquieu 1 and Rousseau. 2 The essays do not make a 
system, and economics is in them not definitely distinguished 
from politics; but both system and the distinction are sug- 
gested in the remarks on the value of general principles and 
general reasonings which he prefixed to the essays on com- 
merce, money, and other economical subjects. "When we 
reason upon general subjects," he says, "our speculations 
can scarcely ever be too fine, provided they be just." 

In both groups of essays Hume was not merely a keen 
critic of prevailing theories and conceptions; his knowledge 
of human nature and of history guided his analysis of a situa- 
tion. A growing clearness of doctrine also may be detected 
by comparing his earlier with his later utterances. In later 
editions he modified his acceptance of the traditional doc- 
trines of the natural equality of men and of consent as the 
origin of society. The essay ' ' Of the Origin of Government, ' ' 
first published in 1777, makes no mention either of divine 
right or of original contract. Society is traced to its origin 
in the family ; and political society is said to have been estab- 
lished "in order to administer justice" — though its actual 
beginnings are sought in the concert and order forced upon 
men by war. Again, whereas, in an earlier essay, he had said 
that "a constitution is only so far good as it provides a 

1 De V esprit des lois, 1748. 

2 Discours sur les sciences et les arts, 1750; Discours sur Vorigine et les fon- 
demens de Vinegalite parmi les hommes, 1755; Du contrat social, 1762. 



Views on Economics 



181 



remedy against maladministration," he came later to look 
upon its tendency to liberty as marking the perfection of civil 
society — although there must always be a struggle between 
liberty and the authority without which government could 
not be conducted. His political thinking, accordingly, tends 
to ! limit the range of legitimate governmental activity ; 
similarly, in economics, he criticises the doctrine of the mer- 
cantilists, and on various points anticipates the views of the 
analytical economists of a later generation. Perhaps, how- 
ever, nothing in these essays shows better his insight into the 
principles of economics than the letter which, shortly before 
his death, he wrote to Adam Smith upon receipt of a copy of 
The Wealth of Nations. In this letter, after a warm expres- 
sion of praise for, and satisfaction with, his friend's achieve- 
ment, he makes a single criticism — "I cannot think that the 
rent of farms makes any part of the price of the produce, but 
that the price is determined altogether by the quantity and 
the demand" — which suggests that he himself had arrived 
at a theory of rent similar to that commonly associated with 
the name of Ricardo. 



CHAPTER IX 
Adam Smith and Others 

I. Adam Smith 

ADAM SMITH was born at Kirkcaldy on 5 June, 1723. 
/-\ He was educated at the University of Glasgow, where 
he had Hutcheson as one of his teachers, and in 1740 
he proceeded to Oxford, where he resided continuously 
through term and vacation for more than six years. Like 
Hobbes in the previous century, and Gibbon and Bentham 
shortly after his own day, he has nothing that is good to say 
of the studies of the university. His own college of Balliol 
gave small promise of its future fame: it was then chiefly 
distinguished as a centre of Jacobitism, and its authorities 
confiscated Smith's copy of Hume's Treatise of Human Na- 
ture; but its excellent library enabled him to devote himself 
to assiduous study, mainly in Greek and Latin literature. 
After some years spent at home, he returned to Glasgow as 
professor of logic (1751), being transferred in the following 
year to the chair of moral philosophy. In 1759 he published 
his Theory of Moral Sentiments, which brought him imme- 
diate fame. Early in 1764 he resigned his professorship in 
order to accompany the young Duke of Buccleuch on a visit 
to France, which lasted over two years. 

This change in his career marks the beginning of the 
second and more famous period of his literary work. He 
found Toulouse (where they first settled) much less gay than 
Glasgow, and therefore started writing a book "in order to 

182 



Smith's Life and Writings 183 

pass away the time. " r This is probably the first reference to 
the great work of his riper years. But it does not mark the 
beginning of his interest in economics. By tradition and by 
his own preference, a comprehensive treatment of social 
philosophy was included in the work of the moral philosophy 
chair at Glasgow ; and there is evidence to show that some of 
his most characteristic views had been written down even 
before he settled there. 2 When, in 1765-6, Smith resided 
for many months in Paris with his pupil, he was received into 
the remarkable society of "economists" (commonly known 
as the "physiocrats" 3 ). Quesnay, the leader of the school, 
had published his Maximes generates de gouvernement econo- 
mique and his Tableau economique in 1758; and Turgot, who 
was soon to make an effort to introduce their common prin- 
ciples into the national finance, was at this time writing his 
Reflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses, al- 
though it was not published till some years later. Smith 
held the work of the physiocrats, and of Quesnay in particu- 
lar, in high esteem ; only death robbed Quesnay of the honour 
of having The Wealth of Nations dedicated to him. The exact 
extent of Smith's indebtedness to the school is matter of 
controversy. But two things seem clear, though they have 
been sometimes overlooked. He shared their objection to 
mercantilism and their approval of commercial freedom on 
grounds at which he had arrived before their works were 
published; and he did not accept their special theory that 
agriculture is the sole source of wealth, or the practical con- 
sequence which they drew from the principle that the revenue 
of the state should be derived from "a single tax" on land. 
After his return from France Smith settled down quietly 
with his mother and cousin at Kirkcaldy, and devoted him- 
self to the composition of The Wealth of Nations, which was 

1 Cp. J. Rae, Life of Adam Smith, p. 179. 

3 Cp. Dugald Stewart, Life and Writings of Adam Smith in Works, i., pp. 
67, 68; Lectures of Adam Smith, ed. Caiman, pp. 157 ff. 

3 This term was invented by Dupont de Nemours (1739-18 17), a younger 
member of the school. 



1 84 Adam Smith and Others 

published in 1776. In 1778 he removed to Edinburgh as 
commissioner of customs; he died on 17 July, 1790. 

Apart from some minor writings Adam Smith was the 
author of two works of unequal importance. These two 
works belong to different periods of his life — the professorial, 
in ! which he may be looked upon as leading the ordinary 
secluded life of a scholar, and the later period, in which he 
had gathered wider knowledge of men and affairs. And the 
two works differ in the general impression which they are 
apt to produce. According to the earlier, sympathy, or 
social feeling, is the foundation of morality; the ideal of the 
later work is that of a social system in which each person is 
left free to pursue his own interest in his own way, and the 
author throws gentle ridicule upon the "affectation" of 
1 ' trading for the public benefit. ' ' Undue stress has, however, 
been laid upon the difference; it is superficial rather than 
fundamental and results from the diversity of subject and 
method in the two works rather than from an opposition 
between their underlying ideas. Indeed, it might be argued 
that the social factor in the individual, which is brought out 
in the ethical treatise, is a necessary condition of that view 
of a harmony between public and private interests which 
underlies the doctrine of "natural liberty" taught in The 
Wealth of Nations. 

The Theory of Moral Sentiments covers much ground 
already traversed by preceding British moralists. It is an 
elaborate analysis of the various forms and objects of the 
moral consciousness. It is written in a flowing and eloquent, 
if rather diffuse, style; it is full of apt illustration; and the 
whole treatise is dominated by a leading idea. Smith's 
central problem, like that of his predecessors, is to explain the 
fact of moral approval and disapproval. He discards the 
doctrine of a special "moral sense," impervious to analysis, 
which had been put forward by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. 
Like Hume he regards sympathy as the fundamental fact 
of the moral consciousness; and he seeks to show, more ex- 
actly than Hume had done, how sympathy can become a 



The Theory of Moral Sentiments 



185 



test of morality. He sees that it is not, of itself, a sufficient 
test. A spectator may enter imaginatively into the emotional 
attitude of another man, and this is sympathy ; but it is not a 
justification of the man's attitude. The spectator may have 
misunderstood the circumstances, or his own interests may 
have been involved. Accordingly, the only sympathy that 
has ethical value is that of an " impartial and well-informed 
spectator." But this impartial and well-informed spectator, 
whose sympathy with our passions and affections would be 
their adequate justification, is not an actual but an ideal 
person ; and indeed Smith recognises as much when he says 
that we have to appeal from "the opinions of mankind" to 
"the tribunal of [our] own conscience" — to "the man within 
the breast. ' ' The great merit of the theory, as worked out by 
Smith, is its recognition of the importance of the social factor 
in morality, and of sympathy as the means by which this 
social factor operates. The individual man, in his view, is a 
being of social structure and tendencies. But the social side 
of his nature is not exaggerated: if man "can subsist only in 
society," it is equally true that "every man is by nature first 
and principally recommended to his own care." These 
points modify the contrast between the teaching of his first 
work and the "individualism" of his economic theory. 

Adam Smith is frequently spoken of as the founder of 
political economy. By this is meant that he was the first 
to isolate economic facts, to treat them as a whole, and to 
treat them scientifically. But, nine years before the publica- 
tion of The Wealth of Nations, another work appeared which 
may be regarded as having anticipated it in these respects — 
Sir James Steuart's Inquiry into the Principles of Political 
Economy (1767). Stuart was a Jacobite laird, who, in 1763, 
returned from a long exile abroad. He had travelled ex- 
tensively, and his work contains the results of observation of 
different states of society as well as of systematic reflection ; 
but it is without merit in respect of literary form. It is pre- 
sented to the public as "an attempt towards reducing to 
principles, and forming into a regular science, the compli- 



1 86 Adam Smith and Others 

cated interests of domestic policy." It deals with "popula- 
tion, agriculture, trade, industry, money, coin, interest, 
circulation, banks, exchange, public credit, and taxes"; and 
the author has a definite view of scientific method. He 
speaks, indeed, of "the art of political economy," using the 
term "political economy" in much the same sense as that in 
which Smith used it in dealing with "systems of political 
economy" in the fourth book of his great work. But this art 
is the statesman's business; and behind the statesman stands 
"the speculative person, who, removed from the practice, 
extracts the principles of this science from observation and 
reflection." Steuart does not pretend to a system, but only 
to "a clear deduction of principles." These principles, how- 
ever, are themselves gathered from experience. His first 
chapter opens with the assertion, "Man we find acting uni- 
formly in all ages, in all countries, and in all climates, from 
the principles of self-interest, expediency, duty, and passion." 
And, of these, "the ruling principle" which he follows is "the 
principle of self-interest." From this point the author's 
method may be described as deductive, and as resembling 
that of Smith's successors more than it does Smith's own. 
Further, he recognises that the conclusions, like the prin- 
ciples from which they proceed, are abstract and may not fit 
all kinds of social conditions, so that "the political economy 
in each [country] must necessarily be different." How far 
Smith took account of Steuart's reasonings we cannot say; 
he does not mention his name : though he is reported to have 
said that he understood Steuart's system better from his 
talk than from his book. 

Adam Smith does not begin with a discourse on method ; 
he was an artist in exposition ; and he feared, perhaps unduly, 
any appearance of pedantry. He plunges at once into his 
subject: "The annual labour of every nation is the fund 
which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and con- 
veniences of life which it annually consumes." These first 
words suggest the prevailing theme. Wealth consists not in 
the precious metals, but in the goods which men use or con- 



The Wealth of Rations 187 

sume ; and its source or cause is labour. On this foundation 
he builds the structure of his science ; and — although he says 
nothing about it — we can trace the method which he regarded 
as appropriate to his enquiry. It may be described shortly 
as reflection and reasoning checked and reinforced by his- 
torical investigation. The main theorems of the analytical 
economics of a later period are to be found expressed or sug- 
gested in his work ; but almost every deduction is supported 
by concrete instances. Rival schools have thus regarded him 
as their founder, and are witnesses to his grasp of principles 
and insight into facts. He could isolate a cause and follow 
out its effects; and, if he was apt sometimes to exaggerate 
its prominence in the complex of human motives and social 
conditions, it was because the facts at his disposal did not 
suggest the necessary qualifications of his doctrine, although 
further experience may have shown that the qualifications 
are needed. 

Adam Smith isolates the fact of wealth and makes it 
the subject of a science. But he sees this fact in its connec- 
tions with life as a whole. His reasonings are grounded in a 
view of human nature and its environment, both of which 
meet in labour, the source of wealth and also, as he thinks, 
the ultimate standard of the value of commodities. In the 
division of labour he sees the first step taken by man in in- 
dustrial progress. His treatment of this subject has become 
classical, and is too well known for quotation; it is more to 
the purpose to point out that it was an unerring instinct for 
essentials which led him, in his first chapter, to fix attention 
on a point so obvious that it might easily have been over- 
looked and yet of far-reaching importance in social develop- 
ment generally. The division of labour, according to Smith, 
is the result of "the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange 
one thing for another." But his analysis of motives goes 
deeper than this; and, so far as they are concerned with 
wealth, human motives seem to be reduced by him to two : 
"the passion for present enjoyment" which "prompts to 
expense," and "the desire of bettering our condition" which 



1 88 Adam Smith and Others 

"prompts to save." Both are selfish; and it is on these two 
motives of self-interest, or on a view of one's own advantage, 
that Smith constantly relies. He constructs an economic 
commonwealth which consists of a multitude of persons, each 
seeking his own interest and, in so doing, unwittingly further- 
ing the public good — thus promoting "an end which was no 
part of his intention. ' ' ' ' The natural effort of every individ- 
ual to better his own condition," he says, "when suffered to 
exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a prin- 
ciple, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only 
capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, 
but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with 
which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its opera- 
tions." 

Smith, like many other philosophers of the time, assumed 
that there was a natural identity of public and private inter- 
ests. It is a comfortable belief that society would be served 
best if everybody looked after his own interests; and, in an 
economist, this belief was perhaps an inevitable reaction 
from a condition in which state regulation of industry had 
largely consisted in distributing monopolies and other privi- 
leges. In Smith's mind the belief was also bound up with the 
view that this identity of interests resulted from the guidance 
of "the invisible hand" that directs the fate of mankind. 
But the belief itself was incapable of verification, and subse- 
quent industrial history refutes it. Indeed, in various places 
in his work, Smith himself declines to be bound by it. He 
thinks that the interests of the landowners and of the work- 
ing class are in close agreement with the interests of society, 
but that those of "merchants and master manufacturers" 
have not the same connection with the public interest . ' ' The 
interest of the dealers," he says, "is always in some respects 
different from, and even opposite to, that of the public." 
The harmony of interests, therefore, is incomplete. Nor 
would it be fair to say that Smith had relinquished, in The 
Wealth of Nations, his earlier view of the social factor in 
human motive. What he did hold was rather that, in the 



The Natural Order 189 

pursuit of wealth, that is to say, in industry and commerce, 
the motive of self-interest predominates ; in famous passages, 
he speaks as if no other motive need be taken into account ; 
but he recognises its varying strength ; and it is only in the 
class of "merchants and master manufacturers" that he 
regards it as having free course : they are acute in the percep- 
tion of their own interest and unresting in its pursuit ; in the 
country gentleman, on the other hand, selfish interest is 
tempered by generosity and weakened by indolence. l 

From the nature of man and the environment in which he 
is placed, Smith derives his doctrine of "the natural progress 
of opulence. ' ' Subsistence is ' * prior to conveniency and lux- 
ury"; agriculture provides the former, commerce the latter; 
the cultivation of the country, therefore, precedes the in- 
crease of the town; the town, indeed, has to subsist on the 
surplus produce of the country ; foreign commerce comes later 
still. This is the natural order, and it is promoted by man's 
natural inclinations. But human institutions have thwarted 
these natural inclinations, and, "in many respects, entirely 
inverted " the natural order. Up to Adam Smith's time, the 
regulation of industry had been almost universally admitted 
to be part of the government's functions; criticism of the 
principles and methods of this regulation had not been 
wanting; the theory of "the balance of trade," for instance, 
important in the doctrine of the mercantilists, had been ex- 
amined and rejected by Hume and by others before him. 
But Smith made a comprehensive survey of the means by 
which, in agriculture, in the home trade, and in foreign com- 
merce, the state had attempted to regulate industry; these 
attempts, he thought, were all diversions of the course of 
trade from its "natural channels"; and he maintained that 
they were uniformly pernicious. Whether it acts by prefer- 
ence or by restraint, every such system "retards, instead of 
accelerating, the progress of the society towards real wealth 
and greatness ; and diminishes, instead of increasing, the real 
value of the annual produce of its land and labour." When 

1 The Wealth of Nations, bk. i, ch. xi., conclusion. 



190 Adam Smith and Others 

all such systems are swept away, "the obvious and simple 
system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. ' ' x 
The ideas and arguments of Adam Smith were influential, 
at a later date, in establishing the system of free trade in 
Great Britain; and, perhaps, it would be not far wrong to 
say that a generation of economists held his views on this 
question to be his most solid title to fame. He regarded 
liberty as natural in contrast with the artificiality of govern- 
ment control; and the term "natural" plays an ambiguous 
part in his general reasonings, changing its shade of meaning, 
but always implying a note of approval. In this, he only used 
the language of his time — though Hume had pointed out that 
the word w§,s treacherous. But it has to be borne in mind 
that, while he extolled this "natural liberty" as the best 
thing for trade, he did not say that it was in all cases the best 
thing for a country. He saw that there were other things 
than wealth which were worth having, and that of some of 
these the state was the guardian. Security must take prece- 
dence of opulence, and on this ground he would restrict 
natural liberty, not only to defend the national safety, 2 but 
also for the protection of the citizens generally. 3 

II. Other Writers 

As we look back upon the development of philosophical 
problems, it might seem that, for a philosophical thinker 
after Hume, there was but one thing worth doing — to answer 
him, if possible ; and, if that were not possible, to keep silent. 
But the issue was not quite so clear to his contemporaries. 
Indeed, his own example did not press it home. It showed, 
on the contrary, that work of importance might be done in 
certain departments even when the contradiction was ignored 
to which Hume had reduced the theory of knowledge. Soon 
after the publication of A Treatise of Human Nature, valuable 

1 The Wealth of Nations, bk. iv, ch. ix. 

2 Ibid., bk. iv, ch. ii. 

3 Ibid., bk. ii, ch. ii. 



David Hartley 191 

writings appeared on psychology, and on moral and political 
theory ; there were also critics of Hume in considerable num- 
ber; and one of that number had both the insight to trace 
Hume's scepticism to its logical origin and the intellectual 
capacity to set forth a theory of knowledge in which the same 
difficulty should not arise. 

Among the psychologists the most important place be- 
longs to David Hartley, a physician, and sometime fellow of 
Jesus college, Cambridge, whose Observations on Man: his 
frame, his duty, and his expectations appeared in 1749. The 
rapid march of philosophical thought in the previous forty 
years was ignored by, and probably unknown to, the author. 
The whole second part of his book, in which he works out a 
theological theory, may be regarded as antiquated. He does 
not mention Berkeley ; he seems never to have heard of David 
Hume. But the first or psychological part of the book has 
two striking features : it is a systematic attempt at a physio- 
logical psychology, and it developed the theory of the asso- 
ciation of ideas in a way which influenced, far more than 
Hume did, the views of the later associational school of James 
Mill and his successors. The physiological doctrine was 
suggested by certain passages in Newton's Optics. Hartley 
supposes that the contact of an external object with the sen- 
sory nerves excites "vibrations in the aether residing in the 
pores of these nerves"; these vibrations enter the brain, are 
"propagated freely every way over the whole medullary 
substance," and sensations are the result; further, they leave 
vestiges or traces behind them, and this is the origin of ideas, 
which depend on minute vibrations or "vibratiuncles." 
Motor activity is explained in a similar way. This physio- 
logical view is the basis of his whole doctrine of mind and, 
more particularly, of the doctrine of association. In respect 
of the latter doctrine, Hartley wrote under the influence of 
Locke; but he has left it on record that the suggestion to 
make use of association as a general principle of psychological 
explanation came from John Gay, fellow of Sidney Sussex 



192 Adam Smith and Others 

College, Cambridge, who had written A Dissertation pre- 
fixed to Law's English translation of Archbishop King's 
Origin of Evil (1731), in which the doctrine was used to ex- 
plain the connection of morality with private happiness. 
Hartley offered a physiological explanation of association 
itself, gave a generalised statement of its laws, and applied it 
to the details of mental life. He did not see, as Hume had 
seen, the special difficulty of applying it so as to explain 
judgment, assent, or belief. 

Abraham Tucker was a psychologist of a different temper 
from Hartley. He was a constant critic of Hartley's physio- 
logical doctrines, and he excelled in that introspective 
analysis which has been practised by many English writers. 
Tucker was a country gentleman whose chief employment 
was a study of the things of the mind. The first fruit of his 
reflection was a fragment Freewill, Foreknowledge and Fate 
(1763), published under the pseudonym of Edward Searcj^r, 
certain criticisms of this piece produced, also in 1763, Man 
in quest of Himself: or a Defence of the Individuality of the 
Human Mind, ' ' by Cuthbert Comment. ' ' Thereafter, he did 
not turn aside from his great work, The Light of Nature pur- 
sued, of which the first four volumes were published by him- 
self (again under the name of Search) in 1768, and the last 
three appeared after his death ( 1778) . The author was a man 
of leisure himself, and he wrote for men of leisure; he was 
not without method ; but his plan grew as he proceeded ; when 
new fields of enquiry opened, he did not refuse to wander in 
them ; and he liked to set forth his views de omnibus rebus et 
quibusdam aliis. Indeed, it is a work of inordinate length, 
and the whole is of unequal merit. Many of the long chapters 
have lost their interest through lapse of time and the changes 
which time has brought. Others perhaps may appeal to us 
only when we can catch the author's mood. Such are the 
speculations — put forward as purely hypothetical — concern- 
ing the soul's vehicle, the mundane soul, and the vision of the 
disembodied soul. Mysticism is apt to appear fantastic when 
expressed in language so matter of fact ; but the writer has a 






Abraham Tucker 193 

rare power of realising his fancies. The chapters, however, 
which deal more specifically with human nature are a genuine 
and important contribution to the literature of mind and 
morals. The writer was as innocent of Hume as was Hartley ; 
he criticised Berkeley, though seldom with insight and never 
with sympathy; and he took Locke as his master. But he 
was not a slavish follower; it would be difficult to instance 
finer or more exhaustive criticism than his examination of 
the Lockean view that all action has for its motive the most 
pressing uneasiness. His moral doctrine is perhaps still more 
remarkable for the candour and elaboration with which he 
discussed the problem which faced all followers of Locke — 
the consistency of an analysis of action in terms of personal 
pleasure and pain with a theory of morality in which benevo- 
lence is supreme. Herein he provided most of the material 
afterwards made use of by Paley. Into the details of his 
teaching it is impossible to enter. But perhaps it is not too 
much to say that only his diffuseness has prevented him from 
becoming a classic. The mere mass of the book is deterrent. 
Yet he would be an unlucky reader who could spend half-an- 
hour over its pages without finding something to arrest his 
attention and even to enthral his interest. The author sees 
mankind and the human lot with shrewd but kindly eyes; 
his stores of illustration are inexhaustible and illuminate sub- 
jects which in other hands would be dull ; even the subtlest 
points are made clear by a style which is free and simple and 
varied ; there is never any trace of sentimentality ; but there 
are passages of humour and of pathos worthy of Goldsmith. 

Richard Price, a native of Glamorgan, who became a 
unitarian minister in London, left his mark on more than one 
department of thought. His Observations on Reversionary 
Payments (1771) made a distinct advance in the theory of life 
assurance. His Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Na- 
tional Debt ( 1 771) is said to have contributed to there-estab- 
lishment of the sinking fund. He was drawn into the current 
of revolutionary politics and became a leading exponent of 
their ideas. His Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, 
13 



194 Adam Smith and Others 

the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the 
War with America made him famous in two continents. The 
preface to the first edition was dated 8 February, that to the 
fifth edition 12 March, 1776. Additional Observations on the 
same subject appeared in 1777, and a General Introduction 
and Supplement to the two tracts in 1778. The revolution 
in France was the occasion for A Discourse on the Love of our 
Country, delivered on Nov. 4, 1789; and this he closed with a 
Nunc dimittis: ' l After sharing in the benefits of one Revolu- 
tion, I have been spared to be a witness to two other Revolu- 
tions, both glorious." This Discourse had the further dis- 
tinction of provoking Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in 
France. But, famous as his political partisanship made him 
at the time, Price has a better title to be remembered for his 
first work, A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals 
(1757; 3rd edn, revised and enlarged, 1787). 

Price has the mathematician's interest in intellectual 
concepts and his power of dealing with abstractions. In 
philosophy he is a successor of Cudworth and Clarke, and 
the theories of knowledge of both Locke and Hume are at- 
tacked at the roots. The understanding or reason (he argues) 
has its own ideas, for which it does not depend upon sense- 
impression. Necessity, possibility, identity, cause are in- 
stances of such abstract ideas. They are " intelligible ob- 
jects" discovered by ''the eye of the mind." Reason is thus 
"the source of new ideas"; and among them are the ideas of 
right and wrong ; these are simple ideas and perceived by an 
immediate "intuition" of the understanding: "morality is a 
branch of necessary truth." The system which Price bases 
on his view has become, more than any other, the type of 
modern intuitional ethics. 

Joseph Priestley had many points of sympathy with 
Price. They belonged to the same profession — the unitarian 
ministry — and they were prominent on the same side in the 
revolutionary politics of the day. But, in spite of this simi- 
larity and of their personal friendship, they represent differ- 



Price and Priestley 195 

ent attitudes of mind. Price was a mathematician, familiar 
with abstract ideas, and an intellectualist in philosophy. 
Priestley was a chemist, busied in experiments, a convinced 
disciple of the empirical philosophy, and a supporter of 
materialism. He was the author of The History and present 
State of Electricity (1767), and afterwards of numerous papers 
and treatises on chemical subjects, which recorded the results 
of his original investigations and have established his fame 
as a man of science. He came early under the influence of 
Hartley and published a simplification of his book — omitting 
the doctrine of vibrations and laying stress solely on the 
principle of the association of ideas ; but he rejected Hartley's 
view of mind as an immaterial principle and held that the 
powers termed mental are the result "of such an organical 
structure as that of the brain. ' ' His philosophical views were 
expressed and defended in Disquisitions relating to Matter 
and Spirit (1777), in The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity 
(1777), and in A Free Discussion (1778) on these topics with 
Price; and he also published (1774) An Examination of the 
doctrines of Reid and others of the new school of Scottish 
philosophers. Of greater interest than these, however, is 
the short Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768). 
This forms a contrast to the a priori arguments in which Price 
delighted — although its practical tendency is the same. It 
propounds "one general idea," namely, "that all people live 
in society for their mutual advantage," and draws the con- 
clusion that their happiness is "the great standard by which 
everything relating to that state must finally be determined." 
Priestley thus set the example, which Bentham followed, of 
taking utilitarian considerations for the basis of a philosoph- 
ical radicalism, instead of the dogmas about natural rights 
common with other revolutionary thinkers of the period. 
He did not anticipate Bentham in using the famous utili- 
tarian formula (as he is often said to have done 1 ), but he did 
precede him in taking the happiness of the majority as the 
test in every political question, and he made it easier for 
1 See above, p. 162 n. 



196 Adam Smith and Others 

Bentham to use the same standard in judging private con- 
duct. 

In a somewhat similar way the exhaustive analyses of 
Tucker led to the theological utilitarianism of William Paley, 
archdeacon of Carlisle, sometime fellow of Christ's College, 
Cambridge, and senior wrangler in 1763. Paley was not a 
writer of marked originality. If, in his Principles of Moral 
and Political Philosophy (1785), he owed much to Tucker, in 
his View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794), he depended 
on the Criterion (1752) of John Douglas, bishop of Salis- 
bury — a reply to Hume's argument against miracles — and on 
Nathaniel Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel History (1723 — 
55), and, in his Natural Theology (1804), he drew much ma- 
terial from John Ray's The Wisdom of God manifested in the 
Works of the Creation (1691), from William Derham's Physi- 
co-Theology (1713), and from the work of the Dutchman 
Nieuwentyt, which had been translated into English in 1730 
as The Religious Philosopher . His Horae Paulinae (1790) is 
said to be the most original, and to have been the least suc- 
cessful, of his publications. These four books form a con- 
sistent system. Probably no English writer has ever excelled 
Paley in the power of marshalling arguments or in clearness 
of reasoning ; and these merits gave some of his works a longer 
life as academic text-books than their other merits can 
justify. Paley was essentially a man of his time and his 
views were its views, though expressed with a skill which was 
all his own. 

In his Moral Philosophy there is no trace of the vacilla- 
tion at critical points which marks most of his empirical 
predecessors. The only criticism to which it lies open is that 
morality vanishes when reduced to a calculation of selfish 
interests. A man's own happiness is always his motive; he 
can seek the general happiness only when that way of acting 
is made for his own happiness also ; and this can be done only 
by the rewards and punishments of a lawgiver. Locke dis- 
tinguished three different sorts of law, and Paley followed 



William Paley 197 

him rather closely. But the law of honour is insufficient, as 
having little regard to the general happiness ; and the law of 
the land is inadequate, for it omits many duties as not fit ob- 
jects for compulsion and it permits many crimes because in- 
capable of definition ; there remains, therefore, only the law 
of Scripture (that is, of God) which alone is obviously suffi- 
cient. Hence the famous definition, "Virtue is the doing 
good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the 
sake of everlasting happiness." 

This conclusion leads up to the argument of his later 
works. His Horae Paulinae and Evidence shave to demon- 
strate the credibility of the New Testament writings and the 
truth of the Christian revelation ; and this position assumes 
the existence of God which, in his Natural Theology, he proves 
from the marks of design in the universe and, in particular, 
in the human body. In these works we see how complete is 
the shifting of interest to which reference has been previously 
made. 1 Attention is concentrated on the question of ex- 
ternal evidences, and the content of religion is almost en- 
tirely overlooked. God is the superhuman watchmaker 
who has put the world-machine together with surprising 
skill, and intervenes miraculously, on rare occasions, when 
the works are getting out of order. Paley developed a famil- 
iar analogy with unequalled impressiveness ; he should not 
be blamed for failing to anticipate the effect upon his argu- 
ment which has been produced by the biological theory of 
natural selection ; but he did not pause to examine the under- 
lying assumptions of the analogy which he worked out; he 
had no taste for metaphysics; and his mind moved easily 
only within the range of the scientific ideas of his own day. 

x See above, pp. 153 f. 



CHAPTER X 
Thomas Reid and Others 

THE most powerful reply to Hume — indeed, the only 
competent attempt to refute his philosophy as a whole 
— came from one of a group of scholars in Aberdeen 
who had formed themselves into a philosophical society. 
Of this group Thomas Reid, a professor in King's College, 
was the most notable member, and he was the founder of 
the school of Scottish philosophy known as the Common 
Sense school. With him were associated George Campbell 
and James Beattie, professors (the former afterwards prin- 
cipal) in Marischal College, as well as other men of mark in 
their day. The earliest contribution to the controversy — 
Campbell's Dissertation on Miracles (1763) — dealt with a 
side issue ; but it is of interest for its examination of the place 
of testimony in knowledge; whereas experience (it is argued) 
leads to general truths and is the foundation of philosophy, 
testimony is the foundation of history, and it is capable 
of giving absolute certainty. Campbell's later work, The 
Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), contains much excellent psy- 
chology. Beattie's Essay on the Nature and Immutability of 
Truth (1770) is not a work of originality or of distinction; 
but it is a vigorous polemic ; it brought him great temporary 
fame, and he has been immortalised by the art of Reynolds 
as serenely clasping his book whilst Hume and other apostles 
of error are being hurled into limbo. About the same time 
James Oswald, a Perthshire clergyman, published An Appeal 

198 



Reid's Criticism of Hume 199 

to Common Sense in behalf of Religion (1766 — 72). Reid, 
Beattie, and Oswald were placed together by Priestley for 
the purpose of his Examination; and the same collocation of 
names was repeated by Kant; but it is entirely unjust to 
Reid. 

Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of 
Common Sense was published in 1764; in the same year he 
removed to Glasgow to fill the chair vacated by Adam 
Smith. His later and more elaborate works — Essays on the 
Intellectual Powers of Man and Essays on the Active Powers of 
Man — appeared in 1785 and 1788 respectively. In his philo- 
sophical work Reid has the great merit of going to the root of 
the matter, and he is perfectly fairminded in his criticism. 
He admits the validity of Hume's reasonings; he does not 
appeal to the vulgar against his conclusions ; but he follows 
the argument back to its premisses and tests the truth of 
these premisses. This is his chief claim to originality. He 
finds that the sceptical results of Hume are legitimate in- 
ferences from "the ideal theory" which Locke took over from 
Descartes, and he puts to himself the question, "what evi- 
dence have I for this doctrine, that all the objects of my 
knowledge are ideas in my own mind ? ' ' He points out (what 
is undoubtedly true) that neither Locke nor Berkeley nor 
Hume produced any evidence for the assumption. They 
started with the view that the immediate object of knowledge 
is something in the mind called ideas or (as by Hume) im- 
pressions; and they were consequently unable to prove or 
defend the existence of anything outside the mind and even 
of mind itself, or to explain the relations required for any 
knowledge of things. "Ideas," says Reid, "seem to have 
something in their nature unfriendly to other existences." 

"The ideal theory" had made two assumptions which 
were acknowledged and formulated by Hume 1 : (1) "that 
all our distinct perceptions [i.e., impressions and ideas] are 
distinct existences"; and (2) "that the mind never perceives 
any real connexion among distinct existences." Hume found 
'See above, p. 179. 



200 Thomas Reld and Others 

himself unable "to renounce either of them"; but Reid re- 
jects them both. He maintains that ' ' the ideal system" went 
wrong at the outset by assuming that bare ideas are primary 
data and that we must first get these and then proceed to 
make judgments about them. "Nature does not exhibit 
these elements separate, to be compounded by us." Not the 
simple idea, but judgment is the unit. "The simple appre- 
hension [of the idea] is performed by resolving and analysing 
a natural and original judgment." This judgment, belief, or 
knowledge accompanies sensation, and it cannot be defined 
any more than sensation can 1 ; but "every operation of the 
senses, in its very nature, implies judgment or belief as well 
as simple apprehensions." 2 

This criticism brings out the point that Locke and Hume 
have mistaken the results of their psychological analysis for 
primary data of experience, and have thus fallen into the 
unwarranted assumption that these results — the "simple 
ideas" of Locke, the "impressions" of Hume — are distinct 
existences. And there is another ambiguity in the use of the 
term "idea" on which Reid lays stress. It may mean either 
the operation of the mind or the object of that operation 3 ; 
and the two meanings are confused by Hume, as indeed his 
system does not allow of his distinguishing them. Now, it is 
the idea as object whose existence Reid calls in question. 
1 ' The ideas, ' ' he says, ' ' of whose existence I require the proof, 
are not the operations of any mind, but supposed objects 
of those operations." 4 And he denies the existence of any 
such "images of external things" in the mind. 

Having got rid of the only existences which Hume allowed, 
Reid is able to re-assert the real existence of mind and ex- 
ternal objects, which Hume denied. And it is not mere 
assertion. He reaches his position by means of a new analysis 
of relations. These are not got by comparing distinct ideas. 
"It is not by having first the notions of mind and sensation, 
and then comparing them together, that we perceive the one 

1 Reid's Works, ed Hamilton, p. 107 a. 2 Ibid., p. 209 a. 

* Ibid., p. 224 a. * Ibid., p. 208 b. 



The Principles of Common Sense 201 

to have the relation of a subject or substratum, and the other 
that of an act or operation : on the contrary, one of the related 
things — to wit, sensation — suggests to us both the correlate 
and the relation. ' ' x In like manner, sensations suggest quali- 
ties existing in external things (without at all resembling 
these qualities). 2 Sensation is different from the "per- 
ception of external objects," which it accompanies: re- 
garded by itself, it is an act of mind which has no object 
distinct from the act. 3 The perception, on the other hand, is 
an act of knowledge whose object is the real external 
thing. 

Hume had said that his difficulties would vanish if our 
perceptions [impressions or ideas] inhered in something 
simple and individual, or if the mind perceived some real 
connection among them. And the claim may be made for 
Reid that he proposed a positive theory of knowledge which 
gives the required assurance on these points. Reid pointed 
to certain principles in the constitution of experience, more 
fundamental than distinct ideas or impressions; but he did 
not give any thorough account of their nature or of the way 
in which they determine the structure of knowledge. His 
terminology is not happy, and his thought is not always clear. 
The word "suggests," for instance, is badly chosen, and to it 
is largely due the lack of clearness in his doctrine of imme- 
diate perception. He is aware of the ambiguity without 
effectively guarding against it. The word "gold " suggests a 
certain substance; "in like manner, a sensation of touch sug- 
gests hardness." But there is an important difference be- 
tween the two "suggestions": "in the first, the suggestion is 
the effect of habit and custom; in the second it is not the 
effect of habit, but of the original constitution of our minds. " 4 
He uses the word "suggestion" for the latter process, he 
says, "because I know not one more proper to express a 
power of the mind, which seems entirely to have escaped the 
notice of philosophers, and to which we owe many of our 

1 Works, p. in a. * Ibid., p. 121 b. 

3 Ibid., p. 229. *Ibid., p. 121 b. 



202 Thomas Reid and Others 

simple notions which are neither impressions nor ideas, as 
well as many original principles of belief." 1 

These principles are to be taken for granted, not because 
of their acceptance by the vulgar, but because "the constitu- 
tion of our nature leads us to believe them"; and he calls 
them "the principles of common sense." 2 The term "Com- 
mon Sense" (from which his philosophy has derived one of its 
names) has given rise also to serious misunderstandings, for 
which he is not entirely blameless. Perhaps he laid too great 
weight on the contention that "all men that have common 
understanding agree in such principles" — a contention which 
may favour the misleading appeal to general consent. Yet 
he reached these principles, not by appealing to general con- 
sent, but by an analysis of experience ; and he puts them for- 
ward as "the foundation of all reasoning and of all science." 3 
He did not give them systematic development; but, if we 
read him sympathetically, we may see that he had hold of a 
truth of fundamental importance. The isolated impressions 
or ideas with which Locke and Hume began are fictions; they 
do not correspond to anything real in experience. The sim- 
plest portion of our experience is not separate from its con- 
text in this way; it implies a reference to mind and to an 
objective order, and thus involves the relations which Reid 
ascribed to "natural suggestion" or "common sense." 

The tradition of this type of philosophy — which has come 
to be known as the "Scottish Philosophy"— was carried on 
in the next generation, and through the period of Bentham's 
supremacy, by Dugald Stewart. Stewart was born in 1753 
and died in 1828; for twenty-five years (1785-1810) he was 
professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh. His lectures 
were the most powerful formative influence upon the prin- 
ciples and tastes of a famous generation of literary Scotsmen, 
and they attracted besides many hearers from England, the 
continent, and America. "Perhaps few men ever lived," 
said Sir James Mackintosh, one of his pupils, "who poured 
into the breasts of youth a more fervid and yet reasonable 
1 Works, p. in b. *Ibid., p. 108 b. * Ibid., p. 230 b. 



Scottish Philosophy 203 

love of liberty, of truth, and of virtue. . . . Without de- 
rogation from his writings, it may be said that his disciples 
were among his best works." His writings also were numer- 
ous. The first volume of his Elements of the Philosophy of the 
Human Mind appeared in 1792, the second in 1814, the third 
in 1827. His Outlines of Moral Philosophy was published in 
1794, Philosophical Essays in 18 10, a dissertation entitled 
The Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical, and Political Philo- 
sophy since the Revival of Letters (contributed to The Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica) in 181 5 and 1821, The Philosophy of the 
Active and Moral Powers in 1828; and accounts of the lives 
and writings of Adam Smith, Robertson, and Reid were 
contributed to the Transactions of the Royal Society of 
Edinburgh. 

Himself, in his youth, a pupil of Reid, Stewart remained 
his follower in philosophy. But he avoided the use of the 
term "common sense," which, as employed by Reid, had 
produced the impression that questions of philosophy could 
be decided by an appeal to popular judgment. He speaks, 
instead, of "the fundamental laws of human belief, or the 
primary elements of human reason"; and these he regards 
not as the data upon which conclusions depend, but rather 
"as the vincula which give coherence to all the particular 
links of the chain, or (to vary the metaphor) as component 
elements without which the faculty of reasoning is incon- 
ceivable and impossible." He differed from Reid also on 
many special points, often approximating to the positions of 
writers of the empirical school; but, according to Mackin- 
tosh, he "employed more skill in contriving, and more care 
in concealing, his very important reforms of Reid's doctrines, 
than others exert to maintain their claims to originality." 
His works often betray their origin in the lecture-room, and 
are full of quotations from, and criticisms of, other authors. 
They are written in a style which is clear and often eloquent, 
without ever being affected ; but the exposition and criticism 
are devoted to those aspects of philosophical controversy 
which were prominent in his own day, and they have thus 



204 Thomas Reid and Others 

lost interest for a later generation. Nor did he show any 
such profundity of thought, or even distinction of style, as 
might have saved his work from comparative neglect. 
Among his numerous writings there is no single work of short 
compass which conveys his essential contribution to the 
progress of thought. 

A position intermediate between the associationism of 
Mill and the traditional doctrines of the Scottish school was 
taken by Thomas Brown, professor of moral philosophy at 
Edinburgh from 1810 till his death in 1820. By the time he 
was twenty years of age Brown had published Observations 
on the Zoonomia of Erasmus Darwin (1798), which was recog- 
nised as a mature criticism of that work. Seven years after- 
wards, in 1805, an ecclesiastico-academical controversy drew 
from him a small volume entitled Observations on the Nature 
and Tendency of the Doctrine of Mr. Hume concerning the 
Relation of Cause and Effect, of which a second enlarged edi- 
tion was published in 1806, and a third edition, further en- 
larged and modified in arrangement and title, in 1817. In 
this book he maintained the view that causation means 
simply uniform antecedence, "to whatever objects, material 
or spiritual, the words may be applied"; but he held also 
that there was an intuitive or instinctive belief that, "when 
the previous circumstances in any case are exactly the same, 
the resulting circumstances also will be the same." 

Brown's work on causation certainly showed him to be 
possessed of an intellect of penetrating philosophical quality; 
and it may be noted that, in his preface to the second edition 
of it, he already laid down two principles which distinguished 
his subsequent writing. One was that the "philosophy of 
mind" is to be considered as a science of analysis; the other 
was the implicit rejection of the doctrine of mental faculties 
as it had figured in previous academic philosophies. Func- 
tions such as memory or comparison, he says, are merely 
names for the resemblances among classes of mental facts. 
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1820), 



Thomas Brown 205 

published after his death, these principles were applied to the 
details of perception and cognition. He made the important 
distinction between the muscular sense and touch proper, 
resolved knowledge of extension into a succession of muscular 
sensations, and knowledge of the external world into a num- 
ber of constituent sensations, but held, nevertheless, to the 
real existence of the physical object, on the ground that it 
was implied in the intuitive belief in causality. In these doc- 
trines, and in his analysis of "relative suggestion," he made 
contributions to psychology which were largely original, 
although he was considerably indebted to De Tracy 1 and 
other predecessors. The eloquence of his style, as well as the 
subtlety of his analyses, made his lectures famous during his 
lifetime and, in their printed form, for many years after his 
death. They were written hastily, each lecture to meet the 
demand of the following day, and they are too ornate in style 
for scientific purposes. The shortness of the author's life, 
and his own unfortunate preference for his poetical works 
over his philosophical, prevented a thorough revision of what 
he had written or a consistent and adequate development of 
his views. 

1 Elements d'idiologie, 1 801-15. 



CHAPTER XI 
Bentham and the Utilitarians 

JEREMY BENTHAM is famous as the leader of a school 
of thought and practice which is known sometimes as 
utilitarianism, sometimes as philosophical radicalism. 
Before his day the philosophical school was not a character- 
istic feature of English speculation. The greater writers in- 
fluenced the course of ideas without transmitting a definite 
body of doctrines to a definite group of followers. Bacon 
proclaimed a philosophical revolution ; but he sought in vain 
for assistants and collaborators, and the details of his theory 
were commonly ignored. Hobbes formulated a compact 
system, but he had no disciples. Locke struck out a new way 
which many followed to conclusions often very different from 
his own. Berkeley never lost courage, but he could not open 
other eyes to his own vision, and the verdict of the day upon 
his speculations seems to be not unfairly represented by 
Hume's statement that his arguments "admit of no answer 
and produce no conviction." l For his own sceptical results 
Hume himself seemed to desire applause rather than converts. 
The works of these writers never led to a combination for the 
defence and elucidation of a creed — to any philosophical 
school which can be compared with Peripateticism, Stoicism, 
or Epicureanism in ancient Greece or with the Cartesian, 
Kantian, or Hegelian schools in modern thought. The 

1 Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, sect. xii. f pt. i., ed. Selby- 
Bigge, p. 155; Essays, ed. Green and Grose, ii., p. 127. 

206 



BentharrTs Writings 207 

nearest approach to such a phenomenon was of the nature of 
a revival — the new Platonic movement of the seventeenth 
century, associated with the names of Cudworth, Henry 
More, and other Cambridge scholars. In this way the utili- 
tarian group presents an appearance unknown before in Eng- 
lish philosophy — a simple set of doctrines held in common, 
with various fields assigned for their application, and a band 
of zealous workers, labouring for the same end and united in 
reverence for their master. 

Jeremy Bentham was born in 1748 and died in 1832, when 
his fame was at its height and his party was on the eve of a 
great triumph. 1 He was a prodigy from his childhood; he 
read history and French, Latin, and Greek, when other boys 
of his years were feeding their imaginations with fairy tales; 
at the tender age of thirteen his religious sensibilities were 
hurt and theological doubts raised in his mind when he was 
required to sign the thirty-nine articles on matriculating at 
Queen's College, Oxford; he submitted, however, completed 
his course there, and afterwards duly entered upon the study 
of law in London. His father had marked his abilities and 
expected them to raise him to the woolsack ; he had several 
causes "at nurse" for him before he was called to the bar; 
and, when Jeremy neglected the practical for the theoretical 
side of his profession, the father said in his grief that the boy 
would never be anything more than "the obscure son of an 
obscure attorney." But he made life easy for his son finan- 
cially, and had some compensation for the disappointment 
of his ambition in the reputation made by Jeremy's first book, 
A Fragment on Government, which was published anony- 
mously in 1776, and which the public voice ascribed to one or 
another of several great men, including Burke and Mansfield. 

Bentham spent almost his whole life in London or its 
neighbourhood or at his house in the country ; but, for over 
two years, 1785-88, he made an extended tour in the east of 
Europe and paid a long visit to his younger brother Samuel, 

1 He died on 6 June, the day before the royal assent was given to the 
Reform Bill. 



208 Bentham and the Utilitarians 

who held an important industrial appointment at Kritchev 
in Russia. There he wrote his Defence of Usury (published 
1787). There also, from his brother's method of inspecting 
his work-people, he derived the plan of his "panopticon" — a 
scheme for prison management, which was to dispense with 
Botany Bay. On this scheme he laboured for five and twenty 
years; the government played with it and finally rejected it, 
giving him a large sum by way of compensation for the still 
larger sums which he had expended on its advocacy ; but the 
failure of this attempt to influence administration left its 
mark on his attitude to the English system of government. 

After his return from Russia, Bentham published, in 1789, 
the work which, more than any other, gives him a place 
among philosophers — An Introduction to the Principles of 
Morals and Legislation. It had been printed nine years 
earlier, and only the urgency of his friends (who disliked his 
being anticipated by Paley) induced him to make it public. 
As an author Bentham was singularly careless about publica- 
tion and as to the form in which his writings appeared. He 
worked assiduously, in accordance with a plan which he 
formed early in life ; he passed from point to point method- 
ically; each day he produced a number of pages of manu- 
script, indicated their place in his scheme, and then put them 
aside and never looked at them again. A doubtful proposi- 
tion would lead him to turn to a new line of enquiry, which 
might mean a new book. According to one of the friends of 
his early years, he was "always running from a good scheme 
to a better. In the meantime life passes away and nothing is 
completed." This method of working had its effect upon his 
style. His early writings were clear and terse and pointed, 
though without any attempt at elegance. Afterwards he 
seemed to care only to avoid ambiguity, and came to imitate 
the formalism of a legal document. He was overfond also of 
introducing new words into the language ; and few of his in- 
ventions have had the success of the term "international," 
which was used for the first time in the preface to his Intro- 
duction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. 



The Influence of James Mill 209 

It was fortunate for Bentham's reputation that he soon 
came to be surrounded by a group of devoted friends, who were 
convinced of the value of his ideas and eager to help in mak- 
ing them known. And he was content to leave in their hands' 
the selection, revision, and publication of his more important 
manuscripts. His first work had brought him to the notice 
of Lord Shelburne (afterwards first Marquis of Lansdowne) , 
at whose house he met a number of the statesmen and 
political thinkers of the day. There also he met Etienne 
Dumont, who afterwards gave literary form to the principles 
of legislation and administration which Bentham elaborated. 
Dumont was a citizen of Geneva, and had been minister of 
one of its churches ; driven from his native town by political 
troubles, he settled for some time in St. Petersburg, and in 
1785 came to London as tutor to Lansdowne's son; in 1788, 
and again in 1789, he visited Paris and was in close relations, 
literary and political, with Mirabeau. On the earlier of these 
visits he was accompanied by Sir Samuel Romilly, with 
whom he had become intimate and who was already known 
to Bentham; Romilly showed him some of Bentham's 
manuscripts, written in French, and Dumont became an 
enthusiastic disciple and one of the chief agents in spreading 
the master's ideas. With Bentham's manuscripts and pub- 
lished work before him, and with opportunities for conversa- 
tion with the author, he produced a series of works which 
made the new jurisprudence and political theory known in 
the world of letters. He translated, condensed, and even 
supplied omissions, giving his style to the whole ; but he did 
not seek to do more than put Bentham's writings into liter- 
ary form, and, in Bentham's collected Works, published after 
his death, many of the most important treatises are retrans- 
lations into English from Dumont's versions. The first of 
Dumont 's treatises appeared in 1802, the last in 1825. It is 
stated that, by 1830, forty thousand copies of these treatises 
had been sold in Paris for the South American trade alone. 

Other helpers surrounded Bentham during his long life ; 
but his acquaintance with James Mill, which began in 1808, 



210 Bentham and the Utilitarians 

led, for the first time, to the association of a master-mind 
with his own in pursuit of common objects. Mill was less of 
a jurist than Bentham, but more of a philosopher, and better 
equipped for the defence of their fundamental principles on 
psychological and general grounds. He was also a man of 
affairs, familiar with practical business and accustomed to 
deal with other men, and his influence counted for much in 
making philosophical radicalism an effective political force. 
Bentham was a recluse occupied with ideas and projects, 
infinitely patient in elaborating them on paper, and con- 
vinced that they would be carried into effect so soon as he 
had demonstrated their value. The men who sought him 
out regarded him as a sage, hung upon his lips, and approved 
his doctrines; and he expected other men, especially political 
leaders, to be equally rational. During the first half of his 
career he was not a democrat in politics; but the failure of 
his scheme for a panopticon, which he regarded as an admin- 
istrative reform of the first importance, and in the advocacy 
of which he had incurred lavish expenditure, gave him a new 
— if also somewhat perverted — insight into the motives of 
party politicians, and led to a distrust of the governing 
classes. His mind was thus fitted to receive a powerful 
stimulus from James Mill, a stern and unbending democrat — 
too stern sometimes for Bentham, who once let drop the 
caustic phrase that Mill's creed resulted "less from love to 
the many than from hatred of the few." 1 

Up to this time the utilitarian philosophy had not met 
with great success as an instrument of political propagan- 
dism; it had failed adequately to influence the old political 
parties; an organisation of its own was needed with a pro- 
gramme, an organ in the press, and representatives in parlia- 
ment. The new party came to be known as philosophical 
radicals. Their organ was The Westminster Review, founded 
by Bentham in 1824; their programme laid stress on the 
necessity for constitutional reform before legislative and 
administrative improvements could be expected; and a 

1 See Bentham's Works, ed. Bowring, x., p. 450. 



The Criticism of Blackstone 211 

number of eminent politicians became the spokesmen of the 
party in parliament. It is not possible to assign to the philo- 
sophical radicals their exact share in bringing about the 
changes which gradually ensued ; many other influences were 
working in the same direction. Their power was not due to 
their numbers, but to the great ability of many members of 
the group and to the clear and definite policy which they 
advocated. Bentham was the head of this party; but per- 
haps it is not too much to say that James Mill was its leading 
spirit. Mill also joined with others in giving literary assist- 
ance to Bentham; he edited, with modifications of his own, 
A Table of the Springs of Action (1817) ; he prepared, from the 
author's manuscripts, an Introductory view 0) the Rationale of 
Evidence (printed, in part, in 18 12, and published in the 
Works) ; and his brilliant son, John Stuart Mill, then just 
out of his 'teens, edited The Rationale of Evidence in five vol- 
umes 1 (1827). Another prominent assistant was John Bow- 
ring, who was the first editor of The Westminster Review, 
wrote from the author's dictation the Deontology (a work 
whose accuracy, as an expression of Bentham's mind, was 
impugned by the Mills), and became Bentham's biographer 
and editor of his collected Works. 

Bentham's Fragment on Government is the first attempt 
to apply the principle of utility in a systematic and method- 
ical manner to the theory of government ; it takes the form of 
"a comment on the Commentaries n — a detailed criticism of 
the doctrine on the same subject which had been set forth in 
Blackstone's famous work. Sir William Blackstone was born 
in 1723 ; he practised at the bar, lectured on the laws of Eng- 
land at Oxford, and in 1758 was appointed to the newly- 
founded Vinerian professorship of law ; in 1770 he was made a 
judge, first of the court of king's bench, afterwards of the 
court of common pleas ; he died in 1 780. He edited the Great 
Charter and was the author of a number of Law Tracts (col- 
lected and republished under this title in 1762) ; but his fame 
rests upon his Commentaries on the Laws o] England, the 

1 Reprinted in Bentham's Works, vols. vi. and vii. 



212 Bentham and the Utilitarians 

first volume of which appeared in 1765 and the fourth and 
last in 1769. It is a work of many conspicuous merits. In 
it the vast mass of details which makes up the common and 
statute law is brought together and presented as an organic 
structure ; the meaning of each provision is emphasised, and 
the relation of the parts illustrated : so that the whole body 
of law appears as a living thing, animated by purpose and a 
triumph of reason. The style of the book is clear, dignified, 
and eloquent. Bentham, who had heard Blackstone's lec- 
tures at Oxford, says that he, " first of all institutional 
writers, has taught jurisprudence to speak the language of the 
scholar and the gentleman." These merits, however, were 
accompanied by defects, less obvious to the general reader. 
The author was more prone to see similarities than differ- 
ences. His analytical power has been praised; but it was 
inadequate to the conceptions with which he had to deal. 
His treatment of natural law, in the second section of the 
introduction, is a case in point ; another instance is the discus- 
sion of society and the original contract which Bentham 
criticises. His emphasis on meaning and purpose adds inter- 
est to his exposition, and shows insight into the truth that law 
is not a haphazard collection of injunctions and prohibitions ; 
but this conception also leads him astray; he does not dis- 
tinguish clearly enough historical causes from logical grounds ; 
his exposition takes on the character of an encomium ; and he 
is too apt to discover, at every point of the English con- 
stitution, "a direction which constitutes the true line of the 
liberty and happiness of the community." 1 

In the preface to his Fragment Bentham offers a criti- 
cism of the Commentaries in general; but the body of his 
work is restricted to an examination of a few pages, of the 
nature of a digression, which set forth a theory of govern- 
ment. In these pages Blackstone gave a superficial summary 
of the nature and grounds of authority, in which the leading 
conceptions of political theory were used with more than 
customary vagueness. Bentham finds the doctrine worse 

1 Blackstone, Commentaries (ed. 1836), i., p. 135. 



The Principle of Utility 213 

than false; he finds it unmeaning. He wishes "to do some- 
thing to instruct, but more to undeceive, the timid and ad- 
miring student, ... to help him to emancipate his judg- 
ment from the shackles of authority." He insists upon a 
precise meaning for each statement and each term; and, 
while he reduces Blackstone's doctrine to ruins, he succeeds, 
at the same time, in conveying at least the outline of a defi- 
nite and intelligible theory of government. There are two 
striking characteristics in the book which are significant for 
all Bentham's work. One of these is the constant appeal to 
fact and the war against fictions ; the other is the standard 
which he employs — the principle of utility. And these two 
are connected in his mind: "the footing on which this prin- 
ciple rests every dispute, is that of matter of fact." Utility 
is matter of fact, at least, of "future fact — the probability of 
certain future contingencies." Were debate about laws and 
government reduced to terms of utility, men would either 
come to an agreement or they would "see clearly and ex- 
plicitly the point on which the disagreement turned." "All 
else," says Bentham, "is but womanish scolding and childish 
altercation, which is sure to irritate and which never can 
persuade." 

In an interesting footnote Bentham gives an account of 
the way in which he arrived at this principle. Many causes, 
he tells us, had combined to enlist his "infant affections on 
the side of despotism." When he proceeded to study law, he 
found an "original contract" appealed to "for reconciling 
the accidental necessity of resistance with the general duty of 
submission. ' ' But his intellect revolted at the fiction. " ' To 
prove fiction, indeed,' said I, 'there is need of fiction; but 
it is the characteristic of truth to need no proof but truth. ' 
. . . Thus continued I unsatisfying, and unsatisfied, till 
I learnt to see that utility was the test and measure of all 
virtue ; of loyalty as much as any ; and that the obligation to 
minister to general happiness, was an obligation paramount 
to and inclusive of every other. Having thus got the instruc- 
tion I stood in need of, I sat down to make my profit of it. 



214 Bentham and the Utilitarians 

I bid adieu to the original contract : and I left it to those to 
amuse themselves with this rattle, who could think they 
needed it." It was from the third volume of Hume's Treatise 
of Human Nature that the instruction came. ' ' I well re- 
member," he says, "no sooner had I read that part of the 
work which touches on this subject than I felt as if scales had 
fallen from my eyes. I then, for the first time, learnt to call 
the cause of the people the cause of Virtue. . . . That the 
foundations of all virtue are laid in utility, is there demon- 
strated, after a few exceptions made, with the strongest 
evidence : but I see not, any more than Helvetius saw, what 
need there was for the exceptions." 

Hume's metaphysics had little meaning for Bentham, 
but it is interesting to note that his moral doctrine had 
this direct influence upon the new theory of jurisprudence 
and politics. Hume was content with showing that utility, 
or tendency to pleasure, was a mark of all the virtues; he 
did not go on to assert that things were good or evil according 
to the amounts of pleasure or pain that they entailed. This 
quantitative utilitarianism is adopted by Bentham from the 
start. In the preface to the Fragment, the "fundamental 
axiom," whose consequences are to be developed with me- 
thod and precision, is stated in the words, "it is the greatest 
happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right 
and wrong." Half a century earlier, Hutcheson had formu- 
lated this "axiom" almost in the same words; but Bentham 
does not seem to have been influenced directly by him. 
Helvetius, whom he had studied closely, comes very near 
the same doctrine, l and Priestley had preceded Bentham in 
using a similar standard in political reasoning. Priestley is 
not mentioned in this place, though the preface begins with a 
reference to his scientific discoveries, and Bentham has else- 
where recorded his youthful enthusiasm for his writings. 
He even says that he had found the phrase "greatest happi- 
ness of the greatest number" in one of Priestley's pamphlets, 

1 " La justice consist e . . . dans la pratique des actions utiles au plus grand 
nombre. " — De V Esprit (1758), discours ii., chap. xxiv. 



Politics and Ethics 215 

but in this his memory must have deceived him, for the 
phrase does not seem to have been used by Priestley. So 
far as Bentham was concerned, its origin (as he in one place 
suggests) must be traced to Beccaria, 1 the Italian jurist 
whose work on the penal law proceeded on the same prin- 
ciples as Bentham's and had a notable effect upon the latter. 
Beccaria 's book on Crimes and Punishments was translated 
into English in 1767, and, in this translation, the principle of 
utility is expressed in the exact words in which, through 
Bentham's influence, it soon became both an ethical formula 
and a party watch-word. Bentham himself used the word 
" utilitarian" as early as 1 781, and he asserted that it was the 
only name for his creed 2 ; but, in later life, he came to 
prefer the alternative phrase " greatest happiness principle." 
"The word utility," he said, in a note written in July, 1822, 3 
"does not so clearly point to the ideas of pleasure and pain 
as the words happiness and felicity do : nor does it lead us to 
the consideration of the number of the interests affected." 
A few months after the latter date, the term "utilitarian" 
was revived by John Stuart Mill, 4 who seems to have been 
unaware that it had been previously employed and after- 
wards discarded by Bentham; he found the word in Gait's 
Annals of the Parish, where it is used in describing some of the 
revolutionary parties of the early nineties of the preceding 
century; and, "with a boy's fondness for a name and a ban- 
ner," he adopted it as a "sectarian appellation." After this 
time, "utilitarian" and "utilitarianism" came into common 
use to designate a party and a creed. 

The evidence goes to show that the "greatest happiness 
principle," or principle of utility, was arrived at by Bentham, 
in the first instance, as a criterion for legislation and admin- 
istration and not for individual conduct — as a political, 
rather than an ethical, principle. His concern was with 
politics; the sections of Hume's Treatise which chiefly in- 

1 See above, p. 162 n. a Works, vol. x., pp. 92, 392. 

3 Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. 1879, p. 1 n. 
* Autobiography, pp. 79, 80; Utilitarianism, p. 9 n. 



216 Bentham and the Utilitarians 

fluenced him were those on justice; Beccaria wrote on the 
penal law; and it was expressly as a political principle that 
Priestley made use of "the happiness of the members, that 
is the majority of the members, of any state," as his standard. 
The point is important, seeing that, from the time of Locke, 
the action of every individual had been commonly inter- 
preted as determined by his own pleasure and pain. It is 
difficult to reconcile this interpretation (which Bentham 
accepted) with an ethical theory which makes the greatest 
happiness of all the end for each. But the same difficulty 
does not arise when the point of view is shifted from the 
individual to the state. Indeed, an analogical argument will 
now be open: since each person is concerned with his own 
greatest happiness, the end for the community may be taken 
to be the greatest happiness of the greatest number. And, 
when the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" has 
been accepted in this way, it is easy — though it is not logical 
— to adopt it as not merely a political, but also in the strict 
sense an ethical, principle. 

It is to his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and 
Legislation that we must look for Bentham's fullest and 
clearest account of the underlying principles, psychological 
and ethical, of his enterprise. The interests of the individual 
do not always agree with the interests of the community; 
and this divergence sets the problem for penal law. Again, 
the rule of right is one question, and the causes of action is 
another question; and it is important not to confuse the 
ethical with the psychological problem. This distinction is 
made, and ignored, in the arresting paragraph that opens 
the work : ' ' Nature has placed mankind under the governance 
of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them 
alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to deter- 
mine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of 
right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, 
are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in 
all we say, in all we think : every effort we can make to throw 
off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm 



The Hedonic Calculus 217 

it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire : but 
in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The 
principle of utility recognises this subjection, and assumes 
it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to 
rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. 
Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead 
of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of 
light." 

These sentences give the gist of Bentham's simple 
philosophy. Everything rests upon pleasure and pain. 
They are, in the first place, the causes of all human actions. 
Man is a pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding animal. It is true, 
he has many different impulses, springs of action, or motives ; 
and of these the author essays some account in this book ; and 
in A Table of the Springs of Action, he comprehends them all 
in a diagram with their sources and their corresponding 
interests. But the strength of each impulse or motive lies 
entirely in the pleasure or pain connected with it ; and there 
are only quantitative differences among pleasures themselves 
or among pains themselves ; and pains can be compared with 
pleasures, and marked on the same scale by their distance 
below the indifference or zero point where there is neither 
pleasure nor pain. To this theory a later writer 1 has given 
the name " psychological hedonism." It still counts many 
psychologists among its adherents, but Bentham held it in a 
special form which hardly admits of defence. It is not the 
actual pleasure or pain experienced at the moment of action 
which, according to him, determines action, but the estimate 
formed by the agent of the probable balance of pleasure that 
is likely to result to him from the action. The cause, as well 
as the standard, of human action is thus matter of "future 
fact " only. Had this phrase been used by Blackstone, Ben- 
tham might have pointed out that, so long as anything is 
future, it is not a fact but only an expectation of a fact ; it is 
an estimate of probabilities. Not pleasure, therefore, but an 
idea of pleasure, is the actual motive. Although he thinks 

1 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, book I, chap. iv. 



2i 8 Bentham and the Utilitarians 

that pleasure is man's only object, Bentham always treats 
him as pursuing this object in a deliberate and intelligent 
way under the guidance of ideas or opinions ; he commits the 
philosopher's fallacy of substituting a reason for a cause; he 
overlooks the fact that man was an active being before he 
was a rational being, that he is a creature of impulses, in- 
herited and acquired, that it is only gradually that these im- 
pulses come to be organised and directed by reason, and that 
this rationalising process is never completed. 

Bentham's views on this point lend emphasis to the im- 
portance of his hedonic calculus. If men are always guided 
by estimates of pleasures and pains, these estimates should 
be rendered as exact as possible. For this purpose Bentham 
analyses the circumstances that have to be taken into ac- 
count in estimating the "force" or "value" (notions which, 
for him, are identical) of pleasures and pains. A pleasure or 
pain, he says, taken by itself, will vary in the four circum- 
stances of intensity, duration, certainty, and propinquity. 1 
If we consider its effects, we must take into account two other 
circumstances : its fecundity, or the chance of its being fol- 
lowed by other feelings of the same kind ; and its purity, or 
the chance of its not being followed by feelings of an opposite 
kind. If more than one person is concerned, then account 
must also be taken of the number of persons, that is, the 
extent of the pleasure or pain. If we would estimate the 
benefit to a community of any particular action, then each 
person affected by it must be considered separately; each 
distinguishable pleasure caused by the action must have its 
value for him calculated in accordance with the six circum- 
stances first mentioned ; and each distinguishable pain must 
have its value calculated in the same way. When this has 
been done for every person affected, and the sum of all the 

1 Sidgwick points out that, on a rational estimate, propinquity in time 
(apart from the greater certainty which it implies) is not an independent ground 
of value. Bentham follows Beccaria in introducing it; but Beccaria had a 
different question in view in his enquiry, namely, the actual deterrent effect of 
an immediate, as compared with a remote, punishment. 



The Hedonic Calculus 219 

pains subtracted from the sum of all the pleasures, then the 
surplus of pleasure will measure the good tendency of the 
act; or, if the pains exceed the pleasures in total amount, 
then the balance of pain will measure the evil tendency of 
the act. 

This may seem an elaborate calculation, but it gives 
only a faint idea of the minute detail into which Bentham 
pursued an estimate of good or evil. The significant feature 
of his method is that it is quantitative. The same method 
had been suggested by Hutcheson and others before him; 
his contemporary Paley used it to some extent ; but Bentham 
was the first to follow it out into all its ramifications by an 
exhaustive enumeration and classification of every conceiv- 
able consequence. His aim was to make morals and legisla- 
tion as precise and certain as the physical sciences. For this 
purpose, he saw that quantitative propositions were neces- 
sary. He did not stop to enquire whether quantity was ap- 
plicable at all to pleasure and pain ; he assumed that it was ; 
and perhaps the assumption was correct. Neither did he 
seek too curiously for a standard of measurement of these 
quantities, such as every physical science possesses for its 
purposes. Even in the exact observations which instruments 
of precision render possible in the physical sciences, allowance 
has to be made for the personal equation of the observer. 
But Bentham almost disregarded the personal equation, 
even in matters of feeling. He did not adequately allow for 
the difference of individual susceptibilities, or for the degree 
in which they change in a single lifetime and in the history of 
the race; nor did he avoid the fallacy of arguing as if one 
man's pleasure were always a safe guide for another. Just 
as he assumed that men were constantly controlled by intel- 
lectual considerations, so here he also assumes that men are 
much more alike than they really are : and the two assump- 
tions account for many of the weaknesses, and even absurdi- 
ties, of his projects. 

Later utilitarians have avoided some of these difficulties 
by laying stress on the importance, in personal and social 



220 Bentham and the Utilitarians 

life, of the permanent objects which are sources of pleasure, 
rather than upon particular pleasant experiences. Bentham 
himself, in another work, x follows similar lines in enumerat- 
ing four subordinate ends on which the happiness of society- 
depends. These are subsistence, abundance, equality, and 
security. Subsistence and security are the most important 
of the four: "without security equality could not last a day; 
without subsistence abundance could not exist at all." With 
subsistence and abundance, law has little or no direct con- 
cern: "You may order production; you may command cul- 
tivation ; and you will have done nothing. But assure to the 
cultivator the fruits of his industry, and perhaps in that 
alone you will have done enough.' ' Bentham's treatment of 
equality is remarkable for certain "pathological proposi- 
tions" (as he calls them) which he lays down regarding the 
effect of wealth upon happiness. But the chief care of law 
is security ; and the principle of security extends to the main- 
tenance of all those expectations which law itself has created. 
Security, one may say, is a necessity for social life and for 
any moderate degree of human happiness ; equality is rather 
of the nature of a luxury, which legislation should promote 
when it does not interfere with security. As for liberty, it is 
not one of the principal objects of law, but a branch of secu- 
rity, and a branch which law cannot help pruning. Rights 
of any kind, especially rights of property, can be created or 
maintained only by restricting liberty; "in particular all 
laws creative of liberty are, as far as they go, abrogative of 
liberty." 

These suggestions point to a better way of estimating 
value than the enumeration of separate pleasures and pains. 
But the latter is Bentham's prevailing method ; and he brings 
into clear light a point which, on any theory such as his, 
should not be obscured — the difference between the greatest 
happiness of an individual and the greatest happiness of the 
greatest number. Even Bentham hesitates, both in his ear- 
lier and in his later writings, to assert that it is each man's 

1 Theory of Legislation, trans. Hildreth, 1876, pp. 96 ff. 



The Utilitarian Sanctions 221 

duty to promote the happiness of all. How indeed can it be 
so, in Bentham's view, unless there is sufficient motive to 
require such conduct ? He says that a man is never without 
motives to act in this direction : he has the social motive of 
sympathy and the semi-social motive of love of reputation. 
But a man may have, and commonly has, motives which tend 
in a different direction and may render those insufficient or 
powerless. The divergence may be read between the lines of 
the halting sentences in which Bentham speaks of the coin- 
cidences between private ethics and legislation. There is 
no mental fusion between the two classes of motives (the 
selfish and the social) ; there is no natural identity between 
the courses of conduct to which they tend ; the identification 
of self-interest with public interest can only be brought about 
artificially 1 by means of superadded pleasures and pains, 
especially the latter. These are the sanctions of the prin- 
ciple of utility, which Bentham reduces to four: the physical, 
the political, the moral (or popular) , and the religious. The 
physical sanction results from natural law, and is exemplified 
by the headache that follows intemperance : it sanctions pru- 
dence, but not benevolence. The popular sanction results 
from the illwill of society in any of its non-political expres- 
sions; it is often a powerful deterrent, but it is apt to be 
variable and inconsistent, and it has no exact correspondence 
with public interest. On the religious sanction Bentham does 
not rely. There remains the political sanction, the rewards 
and punishments employed by society organised as a state. 
But rewards count for little. The whole weight of the doc- 
trine that general happiness is the rule of right and wrong for 
individual conduct thus rests upon the penal law; it is the 
"duty-and-interest- junction -prescribing principle." And 
this principle also is found to be imperfect. Even when pun- 
ishment is neither groundless nor needless, there are cases in 

1 These terms — fusion of interests, natural identity of interests, artificial 
identification of interests — describe different solutions of the same problem 
and have been introduced by HaleVy, Formation du radicalisme philosophique, 
i., pp. 15 ff. 



222 Bentham and the Utilitarians 

which it would be inefficacious, and others in which it would 
be unprofitable — by causing more unhappiness than it would 
avert. In general, it can compel probity but it cannot compel 
beneficence. Thus the doctrine of sanctions fails to estab- 
lish the thesis of utilitarianism that general happiness is the 
ethical standard. And the failure is not covered by the re- 
tort : "if the thunders of the law prove impotent, the whis- 
pers of simple morality can have but little influence." 

In the preface to his Principles of Morals and Legislation 
Bentham gave a list of the works which he had in prepara- 
tion or contemplation and in which his great design would be 
completed. According to this list works were to be written 
on the principles of legislation in the following nine matters : 
civil law; penal law; procedure; reward; constitutional law; 
political tactics (that is, rules for the direction of political 
assemblies so that they may attain the end of their institu- 
tion) ; international law ; finance ; political economy ; and these 
were to be followed by a tenth treatise, giving a complete 
plan of law in all its branches, in respect of its form, including 
all that properly belongs to the topic of universal jurispru- 
dence. In the course of his life he dealt with all these sub- 
jects, as well as with many others, in separate works. In 
the more important and complete of his works he depended 
on the literary assistance of Dumont and others. But the 
ideas and the method were always his own. For the exposure 
of the anomalies of English law, and for the elaboration of a 
rational and businesslike system to serve as a model for its 
reform, he deserves almost the sole credit. 

Bentham's power was derived from the combination in 
his mind of two qualities — the firm grasp of a single principle, 
and a truly astonishing mastery of details. Every concrete 
situation was analysed into its elements and these followed 
out into all their ramifications. The method of division and 
subdivision was artificial ; but it tended to clearness and ex- 
haustiveness, and it could be applied to any subject. What- 
ever did not yield to this analysis was dismissed as "vague 
generality." Applying this method with infinite patience, 



The Ideas of the Revolution 223 

he covered the whole field of ethics, jurisprudence, and 
politics. Everything in human nature and in society was 
reduced to its elements, and then reconstructed out of these 
elements. And in each element only one feature counted, 
whether in respect of force or of value — its quantum of 
pleasure or pain. The whole system would have been upset 
if an independent qualitative distinction between pleasures 
had been allowed, such as Plato contended for, or John 
Stuart Mill afterwards attempted to introduce into utilitari- 
anism. ' ' Quantity of pleasure being equal, ' ' says Bentham, 
"pushpin is as good as poetry." As regards the principle 
itself there was no opportunity for originality: Hume had 
suggested its importance to his mind ; Priestley had shown its 
use in political reasoning; he picked up the formula from 
Beccaria ; and in his exposition of its nature there is perhaps 
nothing that had not been stated already by Helvetius. But 
the relentless consistency and thoroughness with which he 
applied it had never been anticipated ; and this made him the 
founder of a new and powerful school. 

His method was not that most characteristic of the re- 
volutionary thought of the period. The ideas of the revo- 
lution centred in certain abstract conceptions. Equality 
and freedom were held to be natural rights of which men had 
been robbed by governments, and the purpose of the revolu- 
tionists was to regain and realise those rights. This mode of 
thought was represented in England by Richard Price; 
through Rousseau it came to dominate the popular conscious- 
ness; in the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 
it was made the foundation of a democratic reconstruction 
of government. The year 1776 is of note in literary history 
also. It marks the death of Hume, and the publication of 
The Wealth of Nations, of the first volume of Gibbon's Decline 
and Fall, and of Bentham's Fragment on Government. The 
last-named work preaches a radical reform, but without 
appealing to natural or abstract rights. Although he was an 
admirer of the American constitution, Bentham was never 



224 Bentham and the Utilitarians 

deceived by the crude "metapolitics" (to use Coleridge's 
word) of the Declaration of Independence, or by the same 
doctrine as it was expounded at greater length in the "De- 
claration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen," decreed in 
the French Constituent Assembly of 1791. His Anarchical 
Fallacies, written about this time, is a masterly exposure of 
the crudities and confusions of the latter document. All 
rights, in his view, are the creation of law; il natural rights 
is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, 
rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts." Yet the differ- 
ence between Bentha i's theory and that of continental and 
American revolutionists was not immediately obvious. He 
was in correspondence with some of the leaders of the revolu- 
tion, recommended his panopticon scheme for adoption in 
France, and offered himself as chief gaoler; in 1792 he was 
made a citizen of France. Nevertheless his Anarchical Falla- 
cies made his position clear: and it is owing to him that 
philosophical radicalism in England, unlike the currespond- 
ing revolutionary doctrines in other countries, was based 
upon an empirical utilitarianism and not upon a priori ideas 
about natural rights. A comparison of his argument in 
Anarchical Fallacies with his criticism of our "matchless 
constitution" in The Book of Fallacies (1824) shows that he 
was a foe to all kinds of loose thinking, whether in praise of 
revolutionary ideals or in the interest of the established 
order. 

The Constitutional Code, which Bentham published to- 
wards the end of his life, exhibits an endeavour to give to 
the people concerned the fullest possible control over the acts 
of government. The author had become increasingly im- 
pressed by the extent to which "sinister interests," especially 
the personal and class interests of the rulers, interfered with 
public interest ; and he seeks to check their operation at every 
turn. His work is intended "for the use of all nations and 
all governments professing liberal opinions." Some years 
earlier he had published Codification Proposals, offering his 
services in the matter to any nation that wanted them. 



Godwin and Mai thus 225 

Portugal had already applied to him for assistance. He had 
negotiations of a similar, if less official, kind with Spain, 
Mexico, Venezuela, the United States, Russia, Greece, and 
Tripoli. The world seemed to be at his feet, anxious to learn 
from him the arts of law and government ; and he was willing 
to instruct all comers. He sometimes overlooked, but he did 
not entirely disregard, differences of national character and 
historical conditions. In his essay on The Influence of Time 
and Place in Matters of Legislation he attributes immutability 
to the grounds of law rather than to the laws themselves, 
and rebukes as " hot-headed innovators" those legislators 
who "only pay attention to abstract advantage." 

Bentham's genius was comprehensive and tenacious 
rather than profound. He covered an extensive field, always 
following the same clue. He passed from social science to 
religion, and analysed its influence "upon the temporal 
happiness of mankind," part of his work being edited by a 
disciple, George Grote, and published under a pseudonym 
(1822). He wrote also a number of papers on education 
under the title Chrestomathia (1816) ; and he and his friends 
projected a chrestomathic school in which the youth of the 
middle and upper classes were to be trained in correct utili- 
tarian principles. Thus he dealt in a way with the deeper 
things of life, and yet only with the surface-aspect of these 
things. With forces and values that cannot be measured in 
terms of pleasure or pain he had no concern ; into history, art 
and religion he had little insight ; but he was unconscious of 
his limitations, and he attempted to deal with these things by 
his own scale of values. 

On the ground of his general principles Thomas Robert 
Malthus may be counted among the utilitarians ; but he was 
a follower of Tucker and Paley rather than of Bentham. He 
did not share Bentham's estimate of the intellectual factor in 
conduct, and the exaggeration of this estimate in other think- 
ers of the time was the indirect cause of his famous work. 
Hume had spoken of reason as the slave of the passions ; but 



226 Bentham and the Utilitarians 

William Godwin wrote as if men were compact of pure intel- 
lect. He too was a utilitarian, in the sense that he took happi- 
ness as the end of conduct ; but he was under the sway of the 
revolutionary idea; he put down all human ills to govern- 
ment, regarding it as an unnecessary evil, and thought that, 
with its abolition, man's reason would have free play and the 
race would advance rapidly towards perfection. It was this 
doctrine of the perfectibility of man that gave Malthus pause. 
His criticism of the doctrine was first thrown out in conversa- 
tion with his father. The elder Malthus, a friend and execu- 
tor of Rousseau, expressed approval of the idea of human 
perfectibility set forth in 1793 in Godwin's Political Justice 
and in Condorcet's Esquisse oVun tableau historique des pro- 
gress de V esprit fountain. Robert Malthus took a more sombre 
view of things than his father; he had had a scientific educa- 
tion; and, as a clergyman, he knew something of the life of 
the people; above all, he was of the new generation, and the 
dreams of an earlier day did not blind him to existing facts. 
He saw an obstacle in the way of all Utopias. Even if equal- 
ity and happiness were once attained, they could not last; 
population would soon expand beyond the means of sub- 
sistence; and the result would be inequality and misery. 
The argument thus struck out in the course of debate was 
expanded, soon after, in An Essay on the Principle of Popula- 
tion ( 1 798) . A storm of controversy followed its publication ; 
but its teaching made notable converts, such as Pitt among 
statesmen and Paley among philosophers ; and it soon came 
to be adopted as part of the orthodox utilitarian tradition. 
To his critics Malthus replied with the thoroughness of an 
honest enquirer; he travelled on the continent, studied social 
conditions, and investigated the actual circumstances which 
had kept the numbers of the people and their food in equi- 
librium. The answer came in the second edition of his 
Essay (1803) which, in contents, is practically a new book. 
Even the title is modified. The first edition discusses the 
principle of population "as it affects the future improvement 
of society"; the second is "a view of its past and present 



The Principle of Population 227 

effects on human happiness." The former shattered the pic- 
ture of a future golden age, to be reached by the abolition 
of government or by some communistic device; the effect 
which the book produces on the reader is one of unrelieved 
depression ; mankind is in the power of an instinct hostile to 
welfare ; only vice and misery prevent the world from being 
over-peopled. The second edition turns from the future to 
the past and the present ; it is informed by a fuller study of 
facts ; it finds that the pressure of the people on the food has 
diminished with the advance of civilisation; not vice and 
misery only, but morality also, is reckoned among the checks 
to the increase of population. Thus, as he says in the preface, 
he "tried to soften some of the harshest conclusions of the 
first essay." 

The main doctrine of Malthus was not entirely new. 
The question of the populousness of ancient and modern 
nations had been discussed by a number of writers, in- 
cluding Hume ; there were anticipations of Malthus in Joseph 
Townsend's Dissertation on the Poor Laws (1786); and still 
earlier, in 1761, Robert Wallace, in his Various Prospects of 
Mankind, had at first suggested community of goods as a 
solution of the social problem, and then pointed out that the 
increase of population, which would result from communism, 
was a fatal flaw in his own solution. But Malthus made the 
subject his own, and showed by patient investigation how 
population, as a matter of fact, had pressed upon the means 
of subsistence, and by what measures it had been kept in 
check. He produced a revolution in scientific opinion and 
powerfully affected popular sentiment, so that pure literature 
took up the theme : 

Slowly comes a hungry people as a lion creeping nigher, 
Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire. 

It is hardly too much to say that the prospect weighed on the 
social mind of the nineteenth century like a nightmare. The 
mind of the twentieth century has shaken it off like a dream, 
but it has not answered the main thesis for which Malhus 



228 Bentham and the Utilitarians 

contended. It is true that his exposition is not above criti- 
cism. The terms in which he stated his thesis — that popula- 
tion tends to increase in a geometrical ratio and food in an 
arithmetical ratio — are, at best, inexact. Perhaps also he 
did not allow sufficiently for the effects of new methods and 
inventions in increasing the supply of food and for the pos- 
sible reaction of quality upon numbers among men. The 
darker side of his picture of the human lot may be read in his 
criticism of the poor law. But he was not blind to considera- 
tions of a more favourable kind. He saw that the "struggle 
for existence" (the phrase is his) was the great stimulus to 
labour and a cause of human improvement. Thus, at a 
later date, Darwin and A. R. Wallace, working independ- 
ently, found in his book a statement of the principle, of 
which they were in search, for an explanation of biological 
development. 

The publication of An Essay on the Principle of Popula- 
tion determined the career of Malthus, which thenceforth 
was devoted to teaching and writing on economics. His 
Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent, his Principles 
of Political Economy, and his correspondence with Ricardo 
are of importance in the history of economic theory, though 
they were not fitted to exert any notable influence upon 
thought and literature in general. In all that he wrote Mal- 
thus kept in close touch with the actual facts of social and 
industrial life ; in this respect his writings form a contrast in 
method to the works of Ricardo, in whose abstract reasonings 
the economics of the Benthamite school attained their most 
characteristic expression. 

Thus the economic doctrines characteristic of the utili- 
tarian school were elaborated by a writer who cannot be 
regarded as a member of it and who indeed was not interested 
in philosophy or even in the larger questions of social theory. 
David Ricardo — the son of a Dutch Jew who had settled in 
London and himself a successful stockbroker — had already 
made his mark as a writer on the currency when he became 



The Utilitarian Economics 229 

acquainted with James Mill, by whose encouragement, as 
well as by that of other friends, he was induced in 181 7 to 
publish his chief work, Principles of Political Economy and 
Taxation. Ricardo received his impetus towards economic 
study from Adam Smith. He did not share the latter's 
breadth of social outlook or his psychological insight ; but he 
had a masterly power of abstract reasoning which enabled 
him to present economic doctrines in the form of a deductive 
science. He was concerned not so much with the "nature 
and causes" as with the distribution of wealth. This distri- 
bution has to be made between the classes concerned in the 
production of wealth, namely, the landowner, the capitalist, 
and the labourer ; and Ricardo seeks to show the conditions 
which determine the share of each. Here his theory of rent 
is fundamental. According to this theory rent is the price 
which a landowner is able to charge for the special advantages 
of his land ; it is the difference between its return to a given 
amount of capital and labour and the similar return of the 
least advantageous land which has to be cultivated. Con- 
sequently it rises as the margin of cultivation spreads to less 
fertile soils. Obviously this doctrine leads to a strong argu- 
ment in favour of the free importation of foreign goods, 
especially corn. It also breaks with the economic optimism 
of Adam Smith, who thought that the interest of the country 
gentleman harmonised with that of the mass of the people ; 
for it shows that the rent of the landowner rises as the increas- 
ing need of the people compels them to have resort to infe- 
rior land for the production of their food. 

The value of an article is determined, according to Ri- 
cardo, by the amount of labour required to produce it under 
the least favourable conditions; in the distribution of this 
value the share of wages depends on the price of necessaries 
(that is, chiefly, of food) ; and the law of population (which he 
takes over from Mai thus) prevents any further rise of wages. 
On the other hand, the profits of the employer depend on low 
or high wages. Thus, in the progress of society, the "na- 
tural tendency" of profits is to fall, until "almost the whole 



230 Bentham and the Utilitarians 

produce of the country, after paying the labourers, will be 
the property of the owners of land and the receivers of tithes 
and taxes." There is, therefore, an opposition of interests 
within the body economic ; and this opposition is held to be 
the result of natural and inevitable law — "happily checked," 
however, at repeated intervals, by improvements and dis- 
coveries. For their effect Ricardo made allowance. But he 
took no account of other than economic motives in human 
conduct ; he may be said to have invented the fiction of the 
1 ' economic man, ' ' though he did not use the phrase. And he 
regarded the economic structure of society as rigid, though 
his doctrines often read like satires upon it, and they became, 
in the hands both of contemporary 1 and of later socialist 
writers, a powerful argument for fundamental social changes. 
Ricardo's method was to proceed from a few very general 
propositions about society and human nature, and to draw 
out their consequences deductively. That his premisses 
were one-sided generalisations, and that his conclusions at 
best had only hypothetical validity, he did not recognise. 
This method was also characteristic of the Benthamite 
reasoning in political theory generally. Thus it was that, 
in economics, James Mill professed himself Ricardo's dis- 
ciple. Mill's Political Economy (1821) reduces Ricardo's 
doctrines to text-book form, and states them with the concise 
and confident lucidity which distinguished the author. For 
Mill however, unlike Ricardo, economics was only one 
amongst a large number of topics, social and philosophical, 
which were open to the same general method of treatment, 
and which appealed to his interest. Mill was closely as- 
sociated with Bentham — at any rate, from 1808 onwards — 
and it is difficult to find any originality in the fundamental 
doctrines of his creed. At the same time he had certain 
points of superiority. Much inferior to Bentham in juris- 
prudence and all that concerned the details of law, he had 

1 See the bibliography by H. S. Foxwell, in appendix 11 (pp. 191-267) of 
the English translation of A. Menger's Right to the Whole Produce of Labour 
(1899). 



James Mill 231 

perhaps a clearer view of political theory and certainly a 
wider knowledge of historical conditions. He was, of course, 
a whole-hearted adherent of the greatest happiness principle, 
and added nothing to its statement; but he was better 
equipped for its defence on philosophical grounds and he 
could supplement Bentham's deficiencies as a psychologist. 
But the necessity of making an income by literary work, and 
afterwards the demands of official employment, as well as 
always the engrossing interest of public affairs, left him little 
leisure for philosophy. 

Mill's systematic work in political theory is contained in 
certain articles, especially an article on government, con- 
tributed to the supplement of The Encyclopedia Britannica, 
edited by Macvey Napier (1820). In these articles the au- 
thor proceeds methodically to determine the best form of 
political order by deductive reasoning ; and his method was 
the object of severe criticism by Macaulay in an article 
contributed to The Edinburgh Review in 1829, but not repub- 
lished in his collected Essays. This article contained also an 
attack on the utilitarians generally; and Mill's rejoinder, so 
far as he made any, is to be found in A Fragment on Mackin- 
tosh (1835). This consists of " strictures on some passages" 
of A Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy which 
Sir James Mackintosh had contributed to the seventh edi- 
tion of The Encyclopedia Britannica. Like Mill, Mackintosh 
was keenly interested in philosophy, although his career gave 
him little time for its pursuit. In this, his only contribution 
to the subject, he reviewed the work of the English moralists 
with appreciation and insight. It contained criticisms of the 
utilitarians and of their intellectual predecessors which 
aroused Mill's hostility, and its occasional lack of precision 
of thought laid it open to attack. Mill's "strictures" are 
limited to a few points only, and exposed the weaknesses of 
his antagonist's positions in a manner which would have 
been more effective if it had been less violent — although his 
friends had induced him to moderate its tone before making 
it public. 



232 Bentham and the Utilitarians 

Mill's chief philosophical work was, however, his Analysis 
of the Phenomena of the Human Mind ( 1 829) . In this he laid 
the foundation in psychology for the utilitarian superstruc- 
ture. It is a compact statement of a theory of mind elabo- 
rated by the same method as that by which any department 
of nature might be studied. Mental phenomena are reduced 
to their simplest elements, and the association of these into 
groups and successions is investigated, all association being 
reduced by him to one law — that of contiguity. In general 
Mill follows Hume and Hartley — but Hartley much more 
than Hume. He disregards, however, the physiological side 
of Hartley's theory, so that his own doctrines are purely 
psychological. To the psychological school of a later date, 
whose leading representatives were John Stuart Mill and 
Alexander Bain, his chief positive contribution was the doc- 
trine of inseparable association ; in addition, he marked out 
afresh the lines to be followed by a theory which attempts to 
explain the facts of consciousness from the "association" 
of ultimate elements called "sensations," which were as- 
sumed not to be themselves in need of explanation. 



CHAPTER XII 
The Victorian Era 

I. Introduction 

ENGLISH philosophy may be said to have touched low- 
water mark in or about the fourth decade of the 
nineteenth century. The general public had ceased 
to be occupied with matters of speculative thought, and the 
universities did little or nothing to keep an interest in them 
alive. Writing in 1835, John Stuart Mill complained that 
philosophy was falling more and more into disrepute and that 
great events had ceased to inspire great ideas. "In the in- 
tellectual pursuits which form great minds," he said, "this 
country was formerly pre-eminent. England once stood at 
the head of European philosophy. Where stands she now? 
. . . Out of the narrow bounds of mathematical and physi- 
cal science, not a vestige of a reading and thinking public 
engaged in the investigation of truth as truth, in the prose- 
cution of thought for the sake of thought. Among few except 
sectarian religionists — and what they are we all know — is 
there any interest in the great problem of man's nature and 
life: among still fewer is there any curiosity respecting the 
nature and principles of human society, the history or the 
philosophy of civilization; nor any belief that, from such 
inquiries, a single important practical consequence can 
follow. ' ' 1 About the same time, or a few years earlier, similar 
views concerning the low estate of English philosophy had been 
1 Dissertations and Discussions, vol. i., pp. 96, 97. 

233 



234 The Victorian Era 

expressed by Sir William Hamilton and by Thomas Carlyle 1 ; 
and a foreign observer — Hegel — had spoken with scorn of 
the usage of the word ' ' philosophy ' ' in the English language. 2 

The writers who made this complaint were foremost in 
bringing about a change. Without any approach to philo- 
sophical method, Carlyle forced upon public attention ideas 
concerning the ultimate meaning and value of life, and, in 
his own way, had an influence upon the thought of his time 
which may be compared with that of Coleridge in the genera- 
tion immediately preceding. Hamilton and Mill were the 
leaders of a marked revival of interest in speculative topics, 
which reinstated philosophy in its due place in the national 
culture; and this revival took two different directions con- 
nected with their diverse views and training. 

Philosophy, however, had not merely to overcome the 
public indifference referred to by John Stuart Mill; it had 
also to contend against itself, or at least against its dominant 
form. The Benthamite creed, which was in the ascendant, 
was not favourable to speculative enquiry. "The great 
problem of man's nature and life" was regarded as solved 
in a sense which made metaphysics and theology alike im- 
possible ; ethical principles were held to be finally settled by 
Bentham, so that nothing remained but their application to 
different situations; even political and social theory, the field 
of the chief triumphs of the utilitarians, was divorced from 
history and from every ethical idea save that of utility; 
psychology alone stood in need of more adequate treatment 
than Bentham could give it, and James Mill had supplied 
the school with a theory of mind which was in harmony with 
their other views. 

II. Sir William Hamilton and others 

Hamilton's reputation has not withstood the test of time; 
but, in his own day and for a number of years afterwards, his 

1 Cp. Masson, Recent British Philosophy, 3d edn, pp. 2-5.' 
3 Encyklopddie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, § 7, 



Sir William Hamilton 235 

was one of the two names which stood for the revival of 
philosophical thought in Great Britain. His pre-eminence 
was not altogether undisputed, however. Even from his 
younger contemporaries who did most for Scottish meta- 
physics, different opinions regarding his merit may be 
gathered. Ferrier looked upon him, morally and intellec- 
tually, as "amongst the greatest of the great" 1 : whereas 
Hutchison Stirling found in him ' ' a certain vein of disingenu- 
ousness that, cruelly unjust to individuals, has probably 
caused the retardation of general British philosophy by, 
perhaps, a generation. " 2 The truth lies somewhere between 
these extreme views, and it is important to arrive at a correct 
estimate of Hamilton's work in order to understand the 
course of British philosophy. 

Sir William Hamilton was born in 1788, in the old 
college of Glasgow, where his father was a professor. He 
was educated there and at Oxford, was called to the Scot- 
tish bar and, in 1836, appointed to the chair of logic 
and metaphysics at Edinburgh. In 1844 he had a 
stroke of paralysis, and, although he was able to continue 
the work of his professorship until his death in 1856, he 
never recovered his physical strength. His published work 
began with a number of articles in The Edinburgh Re- 
view, republished in 1852 as Discussions on Philosophy 
and Literature, Education and University Reform. The most 
important of these were three articles on ' ' the Philosophy of 
the Unconditioned," "the Philosophy of Perception" and 
"Logic," which appeared between 1829 and 1833. He 
afterwards devoted himself to the preparation of an edition 
of Reid's Works, which he illustrated with elaborate ap- 
pended "Notes, " chiefly historical in character. This work 
was published in 1846; but the "Notes" were never 
completed and are of the nature of material rather 
than of literature. After his death his Lectures on Meta- 

1 J. F. Ferrier, Scottish Philosophy: the old and the new (1856), pp. 15, 16. 
3 J. H. Stirling, Sir W. Hamilton: being the Philosophy of Perception (1865), 
p. vii. 



236 The Victorian Era 

physics and Logic were published in four volumes (1858 — 
60). 

Hamilton's positive contributions to philosophy are 
connected with the topics of the three articles already named. 
Indeed, except as regards logic, these articles contain almost 
all that is essential and original in his work. But other points 
have to be taken into account in estimating his influence 
upon philosophical thought. 

Since the time o r Descartes continental thought had had 
little effect upon English philosophy. Leibniz and even 
Spinoza were hardly more than names. Helvetius had in- 
fluenced Bentham, and De Tracy Thomas Brown; but 
Helvetius and De Tracy themselves worked on lines laid 
down in England — the lines of Locke. The doctrines of 
Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, together with the ideas of the 
deistical movement, had entered into the European tradition ; 
but the reaction which they produced, and which began with 
Kant, was for long ignored in England. One or two enthusi- 
asts tried to make Kant known, but their efforts were with- 
out result; an article on Kant by Thomas Brown in the 
second number of The Edinburgh Review (1803) only showed 
the poverty of the land. Coleridge, indeed, was a much 
more important medium ; he brought into English literature 
ideas which had been derived from Kant and his successors, 
and he was recognised by John Stuart Mill as representing a 
type of thought, antagonistic to the dominant Benthamism, 
which had to be reckoned with. But the teaching of Cole- 
ridge was prophetic rather than scientific, and the philo- 
sophical student had to be approached in his own language 
and by a master who had the command of traditional learning 
as well as fresh doctrines to teach. 

It was here that Hamilton's cosmopolitan learning broke 
in upon British philosophy and lifted it out of the narrow 
grooves into which both the Scottish academic teachers and 
the English Benthamites had fallen. Hamilton's learning 
struck most of his contemporaries as almost superhuman; 
it was certainly vast, and, as certainly, without precedent 



The New Analytic 237 

at the time. It made possible a new orientation in philo- 
sophy. The special problems to which discussion had be- 
come restricted were seen as part of a larger field of enquiry 
which extended over the whole of western thought from 
ancient Greece to modern Germany. Hamilton, however, 
had the defects of his qualities. He never obtained easy 
mastery of his own learning ; he would summon a ' ' cloud of 
witnesses" when a single good argument would have been 
more to the purpose; and his selection of "authorities" was 
often ill-judged : they were numbered instead of weighed ; and 
he would spend time over third-rate schoolmen or equally 
third-rate modern Germans which would have been better 
spent if devoted to a sympathetic understanding of Kant 
and Hegel. Nevertheless, Hamilton's work in this respect 
is important. He overcame the provincialism of English 
thought and he brought it into connection with the greatest 
of the new German philosophers. It may have been an 
imperfect Kant that he revealed; Fichte, Schelling, and 
Hegel were introduced for the purpose of criticism only. But 
the traditional circle of English thought was broken, and new 
ideas were brought within it. 

Hamilton came forward as a reconciler of Scottish and 
German thought — of Reid with Kant. It was only an im- 
perfect synthesis that he worked out, but the enterprise was 
notable. His logical work, indeed, stands to some extent 
apart. He followed Kant in his strictly formal treatment, 
and he devoted a large amount of time, and no little ingenuity 
to the elaboration of a modification of the formal doctrine 
of the traditional logic. This modified doctrine made a great 
stir for many years, and was even hailed as the greatest 
logical discovery since the time of Aristotle. ' It is known as 
"the Quantification of the Predicate." Hamilton's own 
expositions of it are incomplete and are contained in appen- 
dixes to his Discussions and to his Lectures. The clearest 
accounts of his views have to be sought in An Essay on the 
New Analytic of Logical Forms (1850) by his pupil, Thomas 

1 T. S. Baynes, Essay on the New Analytic (1850), p. 80. 



238 The Victorian Era 

Spencer Baynes, and in An Outline of the Laws of Thought 
(the first edition of which was published in 1842) by William 
Thomson, afterwards archbishop of York. But the gist of 
the matter can be put very shortly. According to the tradi- 
tional view, in a judgment or proposition, an assertion is 
made about something ; that is to say, the subject is said to 
possess or not to possess the quality signified by the predi- 
cate. When made not about an individual thing, but about 
a group or class, then the assertion may be meant to apply 
to every member of the class or only to some of them ; it is, 
therefore, necessary to indicate this, or to express the quan- 
tity of the subject. The predicate is not similarly quantified. 
But a quality is always potentially a class — the class of things 
which possess that quality. The most elementary of logical 
operations implies that it can be treated as such and assigned 
a quantity as the subject of a new proposition. Hamilton's 
"new analytic" depends upon the contention that the quan- 
tity thus implied should be always explicitly stated, and con- 
sists in following out the changes in formal procedure which 
seem to him to result from this being done. But Hamilton 
was not thorough enough in the elaboration of his theory. 
He did not see that his view of the judgment as an assertion 
of the quantitative relation between two classes would lead 
to a very different classification of propositions from his and, 
in general, to a much more radical revision of logical forms. 
Two contemporary mathematicians — Augustus de Morgan 
and George Boole — went further than he did ; and the latter's 
treatise entitled The Laws of Thought (1854) laid the founda- 
tions of the modern logical calculus. 

Hamilton's article on "the Philosophy of Perception" is 
both a defence of Reid and, at the same time, a relentless 
attack upon Thomas Brown. It is also an attempt to formu- 
late and justify the doctrine of "natural realism " or "natural 
dualism " in a form less ambiguous than that in which it had 
been stated by Reid. "In the simplest act of perception," 
says Hamilton, ' ' I am conscious of myself as the perceiving 
subject and of an external reality as the object perceived." 



The Philosophy of Perception 239 

As regards the latter factor what we have is said to be "an 
immediate knowledge of the external reality." This clear 
view almost disappears, however, in the process of discussion 
and elaboration which it underwent in Hamilton's later 
thought. In the course of his psychological analysis he dis- 
tinguished sharply and properly between the subjective and 
the objective factors in the act of cognising external reality ; 
the former he called sensation proper and the latter percep- 
tion proper; and he even formulated a "law" of their inverse 
ratio. He elaborated also the old distinction of primary and 
secondary qualities of matter, to which, more suo, he added 
an intermediate class of secundo-primary qualities. As a 
result of these distinctions the doctrine of "immediate 
knowledge of the external reality" is transformed. The ob- 
ject of perception proper, it is now said, is either a primary 
quality or a certain phase of a secundo-primary. But we 
do not perceive the primary qualities of things external to our 
organism. These are not immediately known but only in- 
ferred; the primary qualities which we do perceive "are 
perceived as in our organism.'' That is to say, when we 
perceive a table, we do not perceive the shape or size of the 
table ; knowledge of these is got by inference ; the shape and 
size which we perceive are in our own bodies. The existence 
of an extra-organic world is apprehended through conscious- 
ness of resistance to our muscular energy, which Hamilton 
calls a "quasi-primary phasis of the secundo-primary" 
qualities. 1 From this view it follows that no immediate 
knowledge of external reality is given by sight; and yet it 
would be hard to show that the "testimony of conscious- 
ness, " to which Hamilton constantly and confidently appeals, 
makes any such distinction between things seen and things 
touched. 

The value of Hamilton's "philosophy of the conditioned," 
as he called it, is not easy to estimate, chiefly owing to the 
difficulty of stating the exact sense in which he held his 
favourite doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge. 

1 Reid's Works, ed. Hamilton, Note D* t pp. 88 1, 882. 



240 The Victorian Era 

His most striking publication is the first article he wrote — 
that on "the Philosophy of the Unconditioned." It is a 
review not directly of Schelling or Hegel, but of the eclectic 
system of his French contemporary, Victor Cousin. The un- 
conditioned, in his use of the term, is a genus of which the 
infinite ( or unconditionally unlimited) and the absolute (or 
unconditionally limited) are the species; and his contention 
is that it is not an object of thought at all, but "merely a 
common name for what transcends the laws of thought." 
His argument follows lines similar to those used by Kant in 
exhibiting the antinomies of rational cosmology, though it is 
applied to the conclusions of post-Kantian speculation. 
According to him there cannot be any knowledge of that 
which is without conditions, whether it is called infi- 
nite or absolute; knowledge lies between two contra- 
dictory inconceivables, one of which must be true though 
neither can be conceived; all true philosophy is a philo- 
sophy of the conditioned. "To think, " he says, "is to con- 
dition." 

This statement, however, involves two positions which he 
does not take care to keep distinct. It implies that we cannot 
know the infinite or whole, which in its nature must be with- 
out any conditions; and it may also be taken as implying 
that our knowledge of the finite parts is not a knowledge of 
them as they truly exist, but only as they are modified by our 
way of knowing. This latter position, though very definitely 
stated by Hamilton, is not clearly carried out. He follows 
Kant by laying chief stress on space and time as the forms 
under which we know objects ; but he departs from Kant in 
holding that these forms are also modes of things as actually 
existing. It would therefore appear that the fact of their 
being (as Hamilton calls them) ci priori "forms of thought" 
does not interfere with the objective truth of our spatio- 
temporal knowledge; it is a knowledge, under the forms of 
space and time, of things which really exist in space and time. 
Hamilton's doctrine of immediate perception necessitates 
some such view. He saw, moreover, that some kind of recon- 



The Philosophy of the Conditioned 241 

ciliation was required; but a parenthetical paragraph in his 
article on "the Philosophy of Perception" exhausts what 
he has to say on this important problem. "To obviate mis- 
apprehension, " he asserts that all that we know is "those 
phases of being which stand in analogy to our faculties of 
knowledge.' ' This vague phrase may mean little more than 
that we cannot know what we are incapable of knowing. 
Because the nature of a thing is "in analogy to our faculties " 
may be the reason why we are able to know it ; it cannot show 
that we do not know it as it is or in its actual nature. But 
Hamilton's mind seemed to work in two distinct compart- 
ments belonging respectively to the philosophy of perception 
and to the philosophy of the conditioned. The two lines of 
thought seldom met, and when they did meet the result was 
sometimes curious. Rerumque ignarus, imagine gaudet is the 
taunt he flings at Brown and the representationists ; but, 
when he poses as the philosopher of the conditioned, he takes 
the same tag as his own motto — rerumque ignarus, imagine 
gaudet. 

As regards our supposed knowledge of the absolute or 
of the infinite, that, he holds, is merely a negative conception. 
On this topic he can hardly be said to have set forth anything 
substantially new, though his arguments were novel and 
striking to the English reader of the day. Nor, even here, 
on this fundamental point, can his view be said to be free 
from ambiguity. His doctrine seems to lead logically to a 
form of positivism; he will not even allow that the moral 
consciousness or "practical reason" has the significance 
assigned to it by Kant ; but yet he asserts emphatically that 
what cannot be known can be and ought to be believed. 
What then is belief ? By classifying it as a form or ' ' faculty ' ' 
of cognition, Hamilton strikes at the root of his doctrine that 
thought excludes the notion of the absolute or infinite. When 
on the warpath against the unconditioned, the "imbecility" 
of human knowledge is asserted to the fullest extent ; when 
religious belief is in question, the "unknown God" is repre- 
sented as somehow the object of consciousness. Sometimes 
16 



i\2 The Victorian Era 

it would even appear as if his view were simply that know- 
ledge of the highest object which consciousness can appre- 
hend cannot, like our knowledge of particular things, imply 
a reference to some higher concept. 

The theological results of the philosophy of the con- 
ditioned were worked out thoroughly and with effective logic 
by Henry Longueville Mansel, an Oxford professor who was 
dean of St. Paul's for the three years preceding his death in 
1 87 1. Mansel was a scholar of less miscellaneous learning 
than Hamilton, and his thinking was less original; but his 
thought was not obscured by his learning. In the notes and 
appendixes to his edition of Aldrich's Artis Logicae Rudi- 
menta (1849), and in his Prolegomena Logica (1851), he de- 
fined and defended a formal view of the science similar to 
Hamilton's. His Metaphysics (i860), originally contributed 
to The Encyclopaedia Britannica, is the best connected ex- 
position of the philosophy that may be called Hamiltonian ; 
and, in his Philosophy of the Conditioned (1866), the doctrine 
was defended against the criticisms of Mill. He was also the 
author of a brilliant brochure, in the form of an Aristophanic 
comedy, entitled Phrontisterion (republished in Letters, Lec- 
tures and Reviews, 1873), in which academic reformers and 
German philosophers are satirised. But his wider fame came 
from his Bampton lectures, The Limits of Religious Thought 
(1858). This work is a Christian apologetic founded on the 
doctrine of agnosticism (to use the modern term) which he 
shared with Hamilton. Since knowledge of God, in his abso- 
lute existence, is self -contradictory, since ' ' absolute morality " 
is equally beyond human knowledge and since our moral 
conceptions can only be "relative and phenomenal, " he seeks 
to disallow any criticisms of theological doctrine which are 
based upon human conceptions of good and evil. The indig- 
nation with which this doctrine was repudiated by John 
Stuart Mill formed one of the most striking, but not one of 
the most important, features of his criticism of the philo- 
sophy of Hamilton. 



John Stuart Mill 243 

III. John Stuart Mill and others 

John Stuart Mill is, on the whole, the most interesting 
and characteristic figure in English philosophy in the nine- 
teenth century. He was successively the hope and the leader, 
sometimes also the despair, of the school of thought which 
was regarded as representative of English traditions. He 
was born in London on 20 May, 1806, and was the eldest 
son of James Mill. He was educated entirely by his father 
and was deliberately shielded from association with other 
boys of his age. From his earliest years he was subjected to 
a rigid system of intellectual discipline. As a result of this 
system, knowledge of what are considered the higher 
branches of education was acquired by him in childhood, 
and he started on his career, according to his own account, 
with an advantage of a quarter of a century over his contem- 
poraries. This is probably an overstatement of a very re- 
markable intellectual precocity; and John Mill recognized, 
in later life, that his father's system had the fault of appealing 
to the intellect only and that the culture of his practical and 
emotional life had been neglected, while his physical health 
was probably undermined by the strenuous labour exacted 
from him. James Mill's method seems to have been designed 
to make his son's mind a first-rate thinking machine, so that 
the boy might become a prophet of the utilitarian gospel. 
In this he succeeded. But the interest — one may almost say, 
the tragedy — of the son's life arose from the fact that he 
possessed a much finer and Subtler nature than his father's — 
a mind which could not be entirely satisfied by the hereditary 
creed. He remained more or less orthodox, according to the 
standards of his school; but he welcomed light from other 
quarters, and there were times when Grote and others feared 
that he might become a castaway. "A new mystic" was 
Carlyle's judgment upon some of his early articles. Mill 
never became a mystic ; but he kept an open mind, and he 
saw elements of truth in ideas in which the stricter utilitari- 
ans could see nothing at all. 



244 The Victorian Era 

He had no doubts at the outset of his career. On reading 
Bentham (this was when he was fifteen or sixteen) the feeling 
rushed upon him "that all previous moralists were super- 
seded." The principle of utility, he says, understood and 
applied as it was by Bentham, "gave unity to my conception 
of things. I now had opinions ; a creed, a doctrine, a philo- 
sophy ; in one among the best senses of the word, a religion ; 
the inculcation and diffusion of which could be made the 
principal outward purpose of a life." Soon afterwards he 
formed a small "Utilitarian Society," and, for some few 
years, he was one of "a little knot of young men" who 
adopted his father's philosophical and political views "with 
youthful fanaticism." A position under his father in the 
India Office had secured him against the misfortune of having 
to depend on literary work for his livelihood ; and he found 
that office-work left him ample leisure for the pursuit of his 
wider interests. 

He was already coming to be looked upon as a leader of 
thought when, in his twenty-first year, the mental crisis 
occurred which is described in his Autobiography. This 
crisis was a result of the severe strain, physical and mental, 
to which he had been subjected from his earliest years. He 
was " in a dull state of nerves " ; the objects in life for which he 
had been trained and for which he had worked lost their 
charm; he had "no delight in virtue, or the general good, but 
also just as little in anything else " ; a constant habit of analy- 
sis had dried up the fountains of feeling within him. After 
many months of despair he found, accidentally, that the 
capacity for emotion was not dead, and "the cloud gradually 
drew off." But the experience he had undergone modified 
his theory of life and his character. Happiness was still to be 
the end of life, but it should not be taken as its direct aim. 
"Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. 
The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end 
external to it, as the purpose of life." Further, he ceased to 
attach almost exclusive importance to the ordering of out- 
ward circumstances, and, "for the first time, gave its proper 



Mill's Intellectual Development 245 

place, among the prime necessities of human well-being, to 
the internal culture of the individual. ' ' In this state of mind 
he found in the poems of Wordsworth — "the poet of unpoeti- 
cal natures, " as he calls him — that very culture of the feel- 
ings which he was seeking. From him he learned "what 
would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the 
greater evils of life shall have been removed." 

Mill's widened intellectual sympathies were shown by 
his reviews of Tennyson's poems and of Carlyle's French 
Revolution in 1835 and 1837. The articles on Bentham and 
on Coleridge, published in 1838 and 1840 respectively, dis- 
close his modified philosophical outlook and the exact meas- 
ure of his new mental independence. From the position now 
occupied he did not seriously depart throughout the strenu- 
ous literary work of his mature years. The influence of the 
new spirit, which he identified with the thinking of Coleridge, 
did not noticeably develop further ; if anything, perhaps, his 
later writings adhered more nearly to the traditional views 
than might have been anticipated from some indications in 
his early articles on Bentham and Coleridge. 

These two articles provide the key for understanding 
Mill's own thought. He looks upon Bentham as a great 
constructive genius who had first brought light and system 
into regions formerly chaotic. No finer or juster apprecia- 
tion of Bentham's work has ever been written. Mill agrees 
with Bentham's fundamental principle and approves his 
method. Bentham made morals and politics scientific. 
But his knowledge of life was limited. ' ' It is wholly empirical 
and the empiricism of one who has had little experience." 
The deeper things of life did not touch him ; all the subtler 
workings of mind and its environment were hidden from his 
view. It is significant that Mill assumes that, for light on 
these deeper and subtler aspects of life, we must go not to 
other writers of the empirical tradition but to thinkers of an 
entirely different school. He disagrees with the latter fun- 
damentally in the systematic presentation of their views — 
whether these be defended by the easy appeal to intuition or 



246 The Victorian Era 

by the more elaborate methods of Schelling or Hegel. What 
we really get from them are half-lights — glimpses, often fitful 
and always imperfect, into aspects of truth not seen at all 
by their opponents. Coleridge represented this type of 
thought. He had not Bentham's great constructive faculties ; 
but he had insight in regions where Bentham's vision failed, 
and he appreciated, what Bentham almost entirely over- 
looked, the significance of historical tradition. 

The ideas which Mill derived from the writings of Cole- 
ridge, or from his association with younger men who had been 
influenced by Coleridge, did not bring about any fundamen- 
tal change in his philosophical standpoint, but they widened 
his horizon. And in nearly all his books we can trace their 
effect. He seems conscious that the analysis which satisfied 
other followers of Bentham is imperfect, and that difficulties 
remain which they are unable to solve and cannot even see. 

Mill's System of Logic was published in 1843, and ran 
through many editions, some of which — especially the third 
(1850) and the eighth (1872) — were thoroughly revised and 
supplemented by the incorporation of new, mainly contro- 
versial, matter. It is probably the greatest of his books. In 
spite of Hobbes's treatise, and of the suggestive discussions 
in the third book of Locke's Essay, the greater English philo- 
sophers almost seem to have conspired to neglect the theory 
of logic. It had kept its place as an academic study, but on 
traditional lines ; Aristotle was supposed to have said the last 
word on it, and that last word to be enshrined in scholastic 
manuals. English thought, however, was beginning to 
emerge from this stage. Richard Whately had written a 
text-book, Elements of Logic (1826), which, by its practical 
method and modern illustrations, gave a considerable im- 
petus to the study, and Hamilton's more comprehensive re- 
searches had begun. From them Mill did not learn much or 
anything. What he set himself to work out was a theory of 
evidence in harmony with the first principles of the empirical 
philosophy ; and this was an almost untouched problem. He 
may have obtained help from Locke; he acknowledges the 



/ 



Mill's System of Logic 247 

value for his thinking of Dugald Stewart's analysis of the 
process of reasoning; he was still more indebted to his dis- 
cussions with a society of friends. Thus he worked out his 
theory of terms, propositions, and the syllogism; and then 
the book was laid aside for five years. When he returned to 
it, and proceeded to analyse the inductive process, he found 
rich material to hand not only in Sir John Herschel's Dis- 
course on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1830), but also in 
William Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences (1837). 
After his theory of induction was substantially complete, he 
became acquainted with, and derived stimulus and assistance 
from, the first two volumes of Comte's Cours de philosophic 
positive (1830). These were the chief influences upon his 
work, and their enumeration serves to bring out the original- 
ity of his performance. His work marks an epoch in logical 
enquiry, not for English philosophy only but in modern 
thought. 

The reputation of Mill's Logic was largely due to his 
anlaysis of inductive proof. He provided the empirical 
sciences with a set of formulae and criteria which might serve 
the same purpose for them as the time-worn formulae of the 
syllogism had served for arguments that proceeded from 
general principles. In this part of his work he derived im- 
portant material from Whewell, much as he differed from him 
in general point of view, and he found his own methods im- 
plicitly recognised in Herschel's Discourse. The importance 
and originality of Mill's contribution, however, cannot be 
denied. His analysis is much more precise and complete 
than any that had been carried out by his immediate pre- 
decessors. He seeks to trace the steps by which we pass from 
statements about particular facts to general truths, and also 
to justify the transition : though he is more convincing in his 
psychological account of the process than in his logical justi- 
fication of its validity. When he is brought face to face with 
the fundamental problem of knowledge, as Hume had been 
before him, he does not show Hume's clearness of thought. 

Mill's work is not merely a logic in the limited sense of 



248 The Victorian Era 

that term which had become customary in England. It is 
also a theory of knowledge such as Locke and Hume at- 
tempted. The whole is rendered more precise by its definite 
reference to the question of proof or evidence ; but the prob- 
lem is Hume's problem over again. The ultimate elements of 
knowledge are subjective entities — "feelings or states of 
consciousness " — but knowledge has objective validity. The 
elements are distinct, though the laws of association bind 
them into groups and may even fuse them into inseparable 
wholes — but knowledge unites and distinguishes in an order 
which is not that of the laws of association. The theory of 
knowledge, accordingly, has to explain how our thinking, 
especially in the transition from assertion to assertion which 
we call "proof," has validity for objective reality, and, in 
doing so, it has to give a tenable account of the universal 
principles postulated in these transitions. In Mill's case, as 
in Hume's, this has to be done on the assumption that the 
immediate object in experience is something itself mental, 
and that there are no d, priori principles determining the con- 
nections of objects. In his doctrine of terms and propositions 
Mill emphasises the objective reference in knowledge, al- 
though he cannot be said to meet, or even fully to recognise, 
the difficulty of reconciling this view with his psychological 
analysis. He faces much more directly the problem of the 
universal element in knowledge. He contends that, ulti- 
mately, proof is always from particulars to particulars. The 
general proposition which stands as major premiss in a syl- 
logism is only a shorthand record of a number of particular 
observations, which facilitates and tests the transition to the 
conclusion. All the general principles involved in thinking, 
even the mathematical axioms, are interpreted as arrived at 
in this way from experience: so that the assertion of their 
universal validity stands in need of justification. 

In induction the essential inference is to new particulars, 
not to the general statement or law. And here he faces the 
crucial point for his theory. Induction, as he expounds it, is 
based upon the causal principle. Mill followed Hume in his 



Mill's Theory of Induction 249 

analysis of cause. Now the sting of Hume's doctrine lay in 
its subjectivity — the reduction of the causal relation to a 
mental habit. Mill did not succeed in extracting the sting; 
he could only ignore it. Throughout, the relation of cause 
and effect is treated by him as something objective: not, 
indeed, as implying anything in the nature of power, but as 
signifying a certain constancy (which he unwarrantably 
describes as invariable) in the succession of phenomena. He 
never hesitates to speak of it as an objective characteristic 
of events, but without ever enquiring into its objective 
grounds. According to Mill it is only when we are able to 
discover a causal connection among phenomena that strict 
inductive inference is possible either to a general law or to 
new empirical particulars. But the law of universal causa- 
tion, on his view, is itself an inference from a number of par- 
ticular cases. Thus it is established by inductive inference 
and yet, at the same time, all inductive inference depends 
upon it. Mill seeks to resolve the contradiction by main- 
taining that this general truth, that is to say, the law of 
causation, is indeed itself arrived at by induction, but by a 
weaker form of induction, called per enumerationem simpli- 
cem, in which the causal law is not itself assumed. Such a 
bare catalogue of facts, not penetrating to the principle of 
their connection, would not, in ordinary cases, justify an 
inference that can be relied on. But Mill thinks that the 
variety of experience that supports it in this case, its constant 
verification by new experience, and the probability that, had 
there been any exception to it, that exception would have 
come to light, justify our confidence in it as the ground of all 
the laws of nature. He does not recognise that these grounds 
for belief — whatever their value may be — all assume the 
postulate of uniformity which he is endeavouring to justify. 
A later and more comprehensive discussion of his philo- 
sophical views, especially in a psychological regard, is given 
in his Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy and 
of the principal philosophical questions discussed in his writings. 
This work was published in 1865; and, as his habit was, the 



250 The Victorian Era 

author amplified it greatly in subsequent editions by replies 
to his critics. In this case the criticisms were exceptionally 
numerous. The book focused the whole controversial energy 
of the period belonging to the two opposed schools, the in- 
tuitional and the empirical ; and, in spite of its controversial 
character, it became the leading text-book of that psychologi- 
cal philosophy which had been adumbrated by Hume. It is 
a work which shows Mill's powers at their most mature 
stage. He criticises with severity the theory which he sets 
out to examine ; but he is alive to the awkward places in his 
own position. Among the numerous doctrines on which he 
left the impress of his workmanship, none excited more atten- 
tion at the time of the book's publication, or are of greater 
permanent importance, than his doctrines of the external 
world and of the self. There is nothing fundamentally origi- 
nal about his views on these topics ; but his discussion of both 
illustrates his ability to see further into the facts than his 
predecessors, and his candour in recording what he sees, along 
however with a certain disinclination to pursue an enquiry 
which might land him definitely on the other side of the 
traditional lines. Mill's doctrine is essentially Humean 
though, as regards the external world, he prefers to call it 
Berkeleyan ; and here he is the inventor of a phrase : matter is 
1 ' permanent possibility of sensation. ' ' The phrase is striking 
and useful; but a possibility of sensation is not sensation, and 
the permanence which he attributes to the possibility of 
sensation implies an objective order : so that the reduction of 
matter to sensation is implicitly relinquished when it appears 
to be affirmed in words. Mind, in somewhat similar fashion, 
is reduced to a succession of feelings or states of conscious- 
ness. But the fact of memory proves a stumblingblock in 
his way ; he cannot explain how a succession of feelings should 
be conscious of itself as a succession ; and he implicitly admits 
the need of a principle of unity. Thus he almost relinquishes 
his own theory and only avoids doing so explicitly by falling 
back on the assertion that here we are in presence of the final 
inexplicability in which ultimate questions always merge. 



Mill's View of Matter and Mind 251 

In spite of the prominence of the ethical interest in his 
mind, and in spite also of numerous ethical discussions in his 
other writings, Mill's sole contribution to the fundamental 
problem of ethical theory was his small volume Utilitarian- 
ism, which first appeared in Fraser's Magazine in 1861 and 
was reprinted in book-form in 1863. Perhaps he regarded 
the fundamental positions of Benthamism as too secure to 
need much elaboration. What he offers is a finely conceived 
and finely written defence of utilitarian ethics, into which his 
own modifications of Bentham's doctrine of life are worked. 
He holds that the sanctions of this doctrine are not weaker 
than those of any other doctrine, and that, in its own nature, 
it is neither a selfish nor a sensual theory. It is not selfish, 
because it regards the pleasures of all men as of equal 
moment ; it is not sensual, because it recognises the superior 
value of intellectual, artistic, and social pleasures as com- 
pared with those of the senses. But Mill fails in trying to 
establish a logical connection between the universal reference 
of the ethical doctrine and the egoistic analysis of individual 
action to which his psychology committed him. And he is so 
determined to emphasise the superiority of the pleasures 
commonly called "higher," that he maintains that, merely 
as pleasures, they are superior in kind to the pleasures of the 
senses, irrespective of any excess of the latter in respect of 
quantity. In so doing he strikes at the root of hedonism, for 
he makes the ultimate criterion of value reside not in pleasure 
itself but in that characteristic — whatever it may turn out to 
be — which makes one kind of pleasure superior to another. 

Mill's social and political writings, in addition to occa- 
sional articles, consist of the short treatise Considerations on 
Representative Government (i860), Thoughts on Parliamentary 
Reform (1859), the essays On Liberty (1859) and On the Sub- 
jection of Women (1869), Essays on some Unsettled Questions 
of Political Economy (1831, 1844) and Principles of Political 
Economy (1848). The method appropriate to these topics 
had been already discussed in the chapters on ' ' the Logic of 
the Moral Sciences" included in his Logic. He sought a 



252 The Victorian Era 

via media between the purely empirical method and the de- 
ductive method. The latter, as employed by his father, was 
modelled on the reasonings of geometry, which is not a 
science of causation. The method of politics, if it is to be 
deductive, must belong to a different type, and will (he holds) 
be the same as that used in mathematical physics. Dynamics 
is a deductive science because the law of the composition of 
forces holds ; similarly, politics is a deductive science because 
the causes with which it deals follow this law : the effects of 
these causes, when conjoined, are the same as the sum of the 
effects which the same causes produce when acting sepa- 
rately — a striking and unproved assumption. Like his pre- 
decessors, Mill postulated certain forces as determining 
human conduct: especially self-interest and mental associa- 
tion. From their working he deduced political and social 
consequences. He did not diverge from the principles agreed 
upon by those with whom he was associated. Perhaps he 
did not add very much to them. But he saw their limita- 
tions more clearly than others did: the hypothetical nature 
of economic theory, and the danger that democratic govern- 
ment might prove antagonistic to the causes of individual 
freedom and of the common welfare. To guard against these 
dangers he proposed certain modifications of the representa- 
tive system. But his contemporaries, and even his successors, 
of the same way of thinking in general, for long looked upon 
the dangers as imaginary, and his proposals for their removal 
were ignored. The essay On Liberty — the most popular of all 
his works — is an eloquent defence of the thesis "that the sole 
end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collec- 
tively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their 
number, is self-protection*'; but, as an argument, it meets 
everywhere with the difficulty of determining the precise 
point at which the distinction between self-regarding and 
social (even directly social) activity is to be drawn. Sir 
James Fitzjames Stephen, accepting Mill's utilitarian crite- 
rion, raked his positions with a fire of brilliant and incisive, if 
unsympathetic, criticism in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity '(1873). 



Mill's Social Philosophy 253 

Mill's Political Economy has been variously regarded as 
an improved Adam Smith and as a popularised Ricardo. 
Perhaps the latter description is nearer the mark. Its essen- 
tial doctrines differ little, if at all, from those of Ricardo ; the 
theory of the "wages fund, " for example, is formulated quite 
in the spirit of Ricardo, though this theory was afterwards 
relinquished or modified by Mill in consequence of the criti- 
cisms of William Thomas Thornton. But the work has a 
breadth of treatment which sometimes reminds one of Adam 
Smith : the hypothetical nature of economic theory was not 
overlooked, and the "applications to social philosophy " were 
kept in view. In spite of his adherence to the maxim of 
laissez faire, Mill recognised the possibility of modifying the 
system of distribution, and, with regard to that system, he 
displayed a leaning to the socialist ideal, which grew stronger 
as his life advanced. His methodical and thorough treatment 
of economics made his work a text-book for more than a 
generation, and largely determined the scope of most of the 
treatises of his own and the succeeding period, even of those 
written by independent thinkers. 

Mill died at Avignon in 1873. After his death were pub- 
lished his Autobiography (1873) and Three Essays on Religion: 
Nature, the Utility of Religion , and Theism (1874). These 
essays were written between 1850 and 1870 and include the 
author's latest thoughts on ultimate questions. He had been 
educated in the belief that speculation on ultimate questions 
is futile ; in his works he had always maintained the attitude 
afterwards called agnosticism, for which he was willing to 
adopt Comte's term positivism; he accepted also in general 
Comte's doctrine on this point, though always dissociating 
himself from the latter's political and social theories. But, 
even while, in his book Auguste Comte and Positivism (1865), 
accepting the view that the essential nature and ultimate 
causes of things are inscrutable, he holds that this "positive 
mode of thought is not necessarily a denial of the super- 
natural, ' ' but only throws it back beyond the limits of science. 
His posthumous essays show a further development. In that 



254 The Victorian Era 

on nature (the earliest of the series) he dwells upon the im- 
perfections of the cosmic order as showing that it cannot 
have been the creation of a being of infinite goodness and 
power ; in the last essay of the volume he approaches a tenta- 
tive and limited form of theism — the doctrine of a finite God. 

For more than a generation Mill's influence was dominant 
in all departments of philosophical and political thought; 
he had the initiative, and set the problems for his opponents 
as well as for his adherents ; and his works became university 
text-books. This holds of politics, economics, ethics, psy- 
chology, and logic. A striking reaction against his influence 
is shown in the work of William Stanley Jevons, professor at 
Manchester and afterwards in London, whose economic and 
logical writings are distinguished by important original ideas. 
In his Theory of Political Economy (i 871) he introduced the 
conception of final (or marginal) utility, which has been 
greatly developed subsequently in the analytic and mathe- 
matical treatment of the subject. In logic also he laid the 
foundations for a mathematical treatment in his Pure Logic 
(1864) and Substitution of Similars (1869); and, in his 
Principles of Science (1874), he fully elaborated his theory of 
scientific inference, a theory which diverged widely from the 
view of induction expounded by Mill. As time went on, 
Jevons became more and more critical of the foundations of 
Mill's empirical philosophy, which he attacked unsparingly 
in discussions contributed to Mind. 

George Grote, the historian of Greece, an older con- 
temporary and early associate of Mill, deserves mention here 
not only for his works on the philosophies of Plato and 
Aristotle, but also for some independent contributions to 
ethics, published together under the title Fragments on Ethi- 
cal Subjects (1876). He had little sympathy with Mill's 
approximations to types of thought opposed to the tradi- 
tional utilitarianism. In this respect he agreed with Alexan- 
der Bain, professor at Aberdeen, a writer of far greater im- 
portance in a philosophical regard. Bain was younger than 



Jevons and Bain 255 

Mill and long outlived him; he assisted him in some of his 
works, especially the Logic; he wrote numerous works him- 
self; but his pre-eminence was in psychology, to which his 
chief contributions were two elaborate books, The Senses and 
the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859). 
The psychology of James Mill and of J. S. Mill was, in the 
main, derived from Hartley; but it was Hartley as expur- 
gated by Priestley, Hartley with the physiology left out. 
Bain reinstated the physiological factor, not in Hartley's 
rather speculative manner, but by introducing facts of nerve 
and muscle whenever they could serve to elucidate mental 
process. That came to be, as a rule, whenever the mental 
process itself was obscure or difficult. The result is some- 
times confusing, because it mixes two different orders of 
scientific conceptions. But Bain's work is wonderfully com- 
plete as a treatment of the principle of the association of 
ideas; and perhaps he has said the last word that can be 
said in favour of this principle as the ultimate explanation of 
mind. His range of vision may have been narrow, but he 
had a keen eye for everything within that range. He was 
persistent in his search for facts and shrewd in examining 
them ; and he had no illusions — except the great illusion that 
mind is a bundle of sensations tied together by laws of asso- 
ciation. It is interesting to note how this clear-sighted and 
unimaginative writer made observations which suggest 
doctrines, different from his own, which have gained promi- 
nence later. His observations on spontaneous movement and 
his teaching as to fixed ideas strike at the roots of the analysis 
of volition to which he adhered, and might lead naturally to a 
view of mind as essentially active and no mere grouping of 
sensations or feelings. He offered also a new analysis of 
belief (though he subsequently withdrew it) which resolved 
it into a preparedness to act ; and here the latent " activism " 
in his thinking might have led, if developed, to something of 
the nature of pragmatism. 

George Croom Robertson, professor in University College 
London, was in general sympathy with Mill's school of 



256 The Victorian Era 

thought — sympathy tempered, however, by wide knowledge 
and appreciation of other developments, including those of 
recent philosophy. Circumstances prevented his producing 
much literary work beyond a few articles and an admirable 
monograph on Hobbes (1886). He is remembered not only 
for these, and for his lectures, some of which have been pub- 
lished (1896), but also for his skilful and successful work as 
editor of Mind during the first sixteen years of its existence. 
Mind was the first English journal devoted to psychology 
and philosophy, and its origin in 1876 is a landmark in the 
history of British philosophy. 

In Mill's day and afterwards there was an active, though 
not very widespread, propaganda of the positive philosophy 
of Comte. The study of Comte's system was greatly facili- 
tated by the admirable condensed translation of his Positive 
Philosophy issued by Harriet Martineau in 1853. The chief 
teachers of positivist doctrine in England were a group of 
writers who had been contemporaries at Oxford ; but a serious 
disagreement arose amongst them regarding the prominence 
to be given to the inculcation of Comte's "religion of human- 
ity. " Their activity was shown in lectures and addresses 
and in many translations of Comte's works. The Catechism 
of Positive Religion was translated by Richard Congreve in 
1858; Comte's General View of Positivism by John Henry 
Bridges in 1865 ; and System of Positive Polity by Bridges and 
Frederic Harrison in 1875. Their independent writings were 
inspired by the positivist spirit, even when they did not add 
much to its defence on philosophical grounds. In The Unity 
of Comte's Life and Doctrine (1866), Bridges replied to the 
criticisms of J. S. Mill. He published also Five Discourses on 
Positive Religion in 1882 ; and his Essays and Addresses (1907) 
were collected and edited after his death. 

IV. Rational and Religious Philosophers 

Although Mill's fame overshadowed the other philo- 
sophers of his day, there were a number of contemporary 



The Positivists 257 

writers who were not merely his followers or critics, but in- 
dependent thinkers. Of note among these was John Grote, 
younger brother of the historian, who held the chair of moral 
philosophy at Cambridge from 1855 to 1866. Grote himself 
issued only one volume on philosophy — Exploratio Philo- 
sophica, Part 1 (1865). After his death three volumes were 
compiled from his manuscripts : An Examination of the Utili- 
tarian Philosophy in 1870, A Treatise on the Moral Ideals in 
1 876, and the second part of Exploratio in 1900. They are all 
"rough notes" — as the author himself describes the first on 
its title-page. They have no place in literature. Grote 
thought and wrote simply to get at the truth of things and 
without any view of impressing the public. A "belief in 
thought" upheld him: "a feeling that things were worth 
thinking about, that thought was worth effort. " * He did not 
seek reputation as a philosophical writer, and he has not 
gained it . His direct influence has been restricted to a limited 
number of other thinkers, through whom it has passed to 
wider circles without any definite trace of its origin. His 
books are largely filled with criticism of contemporary 
writers. But none of the criticism is merely destructive: 
it aims always at elucidating the core of truth in other men's 
opinions, with a view to a comprehensive synthesis. Often 
it leads to bringing out important doctrines which, if not al- 
together new, are set in a new light. An instance of this is his 
whole doctrine of "the scale of sensation or knowledge, " and, 
in particular, the elaboration and application of the distinc- 
tion of two kinds of knowledge, or rather the twofold process 
of knowledge, which he formulated as the distinction between 
acquaintance with a thing and knowing about it. He sought 
to assign its due value to phenomenalism or positivism, at 
the same time as he contended for the more complete view — 
"rationary " or idealist — which recognised in positivism "an 
abstraction from the complete view of knowledge. " 2 Simi- 
larly, in moral philosophy, there was a science of virtue, or 
"aretaics, " existing side by side with "eudaemonics, " or the 

1 Exploratio Philosophica, i., p. xxxv. 3 Ibid., ii., p. 298. 

17 



258 The Victorian Era 

science of happiness. Fundamentally, his theory is a doctrine 
of thought: "the fact that we know is prior to, and logically 
more comprehensive than, the fact that what we know is. u 
To be known, things must be knowable, or fitted for know- 
ledge. "Knowledge is the sympathy of intelligence with 
intelligence, through the medium of qualified or particular 
existence." 1 

Religious philosophy in England was stimulated and 
advanced by the work of three men all born in the year 1805. 
These were Maurice, Newman, and Martineau. Frederick 
Denison Maurice had already an ecclesiastical career behind 
him when, in 1866, he succeeded Grote as professor at Cam- 
bridge. Of his numerous works only a few deal with philo- 
sophy ; the most important of these, Moral and Metaphysical 
Philosophy , originally appeared in the Encyclopaedia Metro- 
politan in 1847 and is a historical sketch which is chiefly 
devoted to ancient thought. Maurice's influence was due to 
his personality more than to his books; and he was a social 
reformer and religious teacher rather than a philosopher. 
But his work, both in social reform and in religion, derived 
stimulus and direction from philosophical ideas. John Henry 
Newman was still less of a philosopher, though his Grammar 
of Assent propounds a theory of the nature and grounds of 
belief. More significant, however, is the appearance in New- 
man's work of the idea of development, which was beginning 
to transform all departments of thought. He had started in 
his thinking with the quasi-mechanical view of a fixed norm 
of belief existing in the past ; but for this (in his Essay on the 
Development of Christian Doctrine, 1846) he substituted the 
view of the church as an organism whose life and doctrine 
were in process of growth. The only philosopher among 
those who joined the Roman Church about the same time as 
Newman was William George Ward, who, in various articles, 
carried en a controversy with Mill concerning free-will and 
necessary truth. These and other articles by him were col- 

1 Exploratio Philosophica, ii., 296. 



Religious Philosophy 259 

lected after his death and published as Essays on the Philo- 
sophy of Theism (1884). 

Of much greater importance than these, in a philosophical 
regard, was James Martineau. His philosophy also was 
essentially religious philosophy ; individual freedom and the 
being and presence of God were his fundamental certainties, 
and these he defended in many writings during his long life. 
His earlier works were mainly religious rather than philo- 
sophical, though, in a series of essays, he showed his power 
as a critic of materialism and naturalism, and gave an out- 
line of the ethical views which he afterwards worked out in 
detail. He was eighty years old, or upwards, when his chief 
books appeared — Types of Ethical Theory (1885), A Study of 
Religion (1888), and The Seat of Authority in Religion (1890). 
The first of these is the most notable, and works out the 
original view of the moral criterion which had been previously 
indicated by him. It suffers from faulty arrangement, from 
the undue prominence given to the psychological factor in 
moral judgment, and from the incompleteness of the psy- 
chological analysis. As a whole it does not impress the 
reader. But, taken in detail, it is seen to be full of pene- 
trating criticism and to be inspired by insight into the spirit- 
ual meaning of life. Traces of age are to be found only in its 
defective order and perhaps in its diffuseness ; its style shows 
no marks of weariness: it is brilliant, pellucid, eloquent, 
rhetorical sometimes, and coloured by emotion, but never 
falling below the dignity of his theme. Martineau did not 
make any important advance in speculative construction; 
he was not in sympathy with the idealist metaphysic that 
had risen to the ascendant in England even before his books 
were published; the ideas which he elucidated and de- 
fended were those which had been distinctive of spiritual 
thought for many centuries. In his criticisms, on the other 
hand, he did not restrict himself to the older forms of 
materialist and sensationalist doctrine; he was prompt 
to recognise the difference made by more recent scien- 
tific views, and he showed no lack of power or effective- 



260 The Victorian Era 

ness in dealing with the claims of the philosophy of 
evolution. 

V. Herbert Spencer and the Philosophy 
of Evolution 

The publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 
marks a turning-point in the history of thought. It had a 
revolutionary effect upon the view of the world held by edu- 
cated men similar to that which had been produced more 
slowly, three centuries before, by the work of Copernicus ; on 
philosophical ideas its influence may, perhaps, be better 
compared with that of the theory of mechanics chiefly due to 
Galileo. The latter contributed to philosophy the concep- 
tion of nature as a mechanical system; Darwin contributed 
the conception of evolution and, owing largely to his in- 
fluence, biological ideas gained greater prominence than 
mathematical in philosophical construction. 

The acknowledged leader of the new movement in philo- 
sophy was Herbert Spencer. He was born at Derby on 27 
April, 1820, and his early training was as an engineer. This 
profession he relinquished at the age of twenty-five. He had 
previously, in 1842, contributed a series of letters on "the 
Proper Sphere of Government" to The Nonconformist, and 
from 1848 to 1853 he acted as sub-editor of The Economist. 
In these years he wrote his book Social Statics (1850) and 
began the publication of longer essays in reviews, among 
which mention should be made of the essays "The Develop- 
ment Hypothesis" (1852), "The Genesis of Science" (1854), 
and ' ' Progress : its law and cause " ( 1 857) . He also published 
Principles of Psychology, in one volume, in 1855. His essays 
show, even by their titles, that he was working towards a 
theory of evolution before he had any knowledge of Darwin's 
researches, the results of which were still unpublished. Then 
in i860, he issued his "Programme of a System of Synthetic 
Philosophy, " on which he had been at work for some time, 
and to the elaboration of which he devoted his life. It is 



Herbert Spencer 261 

impossible to speak too highly of the single-minded purpose 
with which he carried out his task, in spite of inherent and 
extraneous difficulties. He continued to work, without 
haste and without rest, publishing First Principles in 1862, 
Principles of Biology (two volumes) in 1864 — 7, Principles of 
Psychology (two volumes) in 1870 — 2, Principles of Sociology 
(three volumes) in 1876 — 96 and Principles of Ethics (two 
volumes) in 1879 — 92. Besides these he designed a series of 
charts of Descriptive Sociology, which were compiled by his 
assistants, until the work had to be suspended from lack of 
funds; and he also produced smaller works on Education 
(1861), The Classification of the Sciences (1864), The Study of 
Sociology (1872), The Man versus The State (1884, and Fac- 
tors of Organic Evolution (1887). Thus his perseverance 
enabled him to complete his scheme : except, indeed, that he 
omitted the detailed treatment of inorganic evolution, and 
thus gained the incidental advantage of avoiding the awk- 
ward problem of the origin of life. And he produced a con- 
siderable amount of subsidiary writing, including an Auto- 
biography (published in 1904, the year after his death), which 
contains a minute and elaborate account of his life, character, 
and work. 

Spencer's idea of philosophy is a system of completely 
co-ordinated knowledge — the sciences consisting of know- 
ledge partially co-ordinated. In this sense his system is 
synthetic. It is a scheme in which everything is to find its 
place, and is to be seen as a resultant of a single principle. 
His elaboration of this scheme approaches completeness, and, 
in this respect, his system stands by itself : no other English 
thinker since Bacon and Hobbes had even attempted any- 
thing so vast. The system itself fitted in admirably also with 
the scientific conceptions of the early Darwinians, and thus 
obtained wide currency in all English-speaking countries 
and, to a less extent, on the continent of Europe. Darwin 
hailed him as "our great philosopher, " for he made evolution 
a universal solvent and not merely a means for explaining the 
different forms of plants and animals. At the same time, the 



262 The Victorian Era 

support which it received from modern science seemed to 
give Spencer's philosophy a more secure position than that 
of those speculative systems of which the English mind 
tended to be suspicious. 

The view of philosophy as science further co-ordinated 
brings Spencer's doctrine into line with positivism. He did 
not, however, entirely ignore the question of the nature of 
ultimate reality. Perhaps he was not much interested in 
questions of the kind, and he had certainly small acquain- 
tance with previous speculation regarding them. But he 
had great skill in adapting current doctrines to his uses ; and 
he found what he needed in the doctrine of the relativity of 
knowledge set forth by Hamilton and Mansel. On this he 
based his doctrine of the limits of knowledge. But he found, 
as others have found, that it was necessary to recognise some- 
thing which lay beyond the sphere of exact knowledge. 
Hamilton had called this the sphere of belief; Spencer says 
that we have an indefinite consciousness of what he never- 
theless calls the unknowable. The nature of this indefinite 
consciousness is not explained by him; yet its object is not 
treated by him, as one would expect it to be, as a mere blank; 
it is said to be "growing clearer"; the unknowable is con- 
stantly referred to as a power, and it is even asserted that it 
makes for the happiness of mankind. These inconsistencies 
soften his paradox that religion and science can be reconciled 
by assigning to the latter the region of the knowable and 
restricting the former to the unknowable. On his view all 
that we know consists of manifestations of the inscrutable 
power behind phenomena; and these manifestations depend 
ultimately upon a single first principle — the persistence of 
force. Spencer's interpretation of this principle is somewhat 
flexible and has been attacked by mathematicians and physi- 
cists as loose and unscientific. Nevertheless Spencer holds 
that from it every other scientific principle must be deduced 
— even the law of evolution itself. He has provided a "for- 
mula, " or rather definition, of evolution. He defines it as 
"an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of 



Spencer's View of Philosophy 263 

motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite 
incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity ; 
and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel 
transformation." All phenomena of whatever kind are 
subject to this law. It is throughout conceived as a law of 
progress, which will issue in a highest state establishing ' ' the 
extremest multiformity and most complete moving equi- 
librium." But this stage also cannot be permanent; and 
Spencer contemplates the history of the universe as a suc- 
cession of cycles — "alternate eras of evolution and dissolu- 
tion." 

Spencer displayed much ingenuity in fitting organic, 
mental, and social facts into this mechanical framework. 
His early training as an engineer seems to have influenced 
his ideas. He built a system as he might have built a bridge. 
It was a problem of strains and of the adaptation of material. 
Regarded thus, the whole problem was mechanical and had 
to be solved in terms of matter and motion. His purpose 
was, as he says, "to interpret the phenomena of life, mind, 
and society in terms of matter, motion, and force." Hence, 
life, mind, and society are treated as stages of increasing com- 
plexity in phenomena of the same kind, and — so far as this 
treatment is adhered to — the characteristic functions of each 
stage are left unexplained. But the method of treatment is 
supplemented by another in which the facts are dealt with 
more directly. This is seen especially in psychology, where 
the "subjective aspect " is recognised with only a suggestion 
of an attempt to deduce it from the objective aspect. Spen- 
cer was a keen observer and fertile in his reflections on what 
he observed. His power of co-ordinating facts may perhaps 
be seen at its best in his Psychology and Sociology. His gen- 
eralisations may be often unsound; but, if we compare these 
works with earlier and then with later treatises on the same 
subjects, it is not possible to deny the great stimulus to 
thought which they gave. 

Spencer himself set the greatest store upon his work on 
ethics. To it, he said, all his other work led up; and this 



264 The Victorian Era 

induced him to issue the first part of it — called The Data of 
Ethics — out of due order and before his Sociology was com- 
pleted. The first part is undoubtedly the most instructive 
section of the book as ultimately finished. The facts of 
morality are regarded as belonging to the same order of 
evolution as the facts dealt with in previous volumes, being 
only more special and complicated; full consideration is 
given to their biological, sociological, and psychological 
aspects ; the respective rights of egoism and of altruism are 
defended; and the ethics of evolution is distinguished from 
the utilitarian ethics not by having some other ultimate end 
than happiness but by its different method and working 
criterion. Where the author fails is in giving any adequate 
proof for his assumption that evolution tends to greatest 
happiness — an assumption upon which his ethical theory 
depends. And, like all the exponents of the ethics of evolu- 
tion who have followed him, he does not distinguish clearly 
between the historical process explained by the law of evolu- 
tion and the ground of its authority for conduct — if such 
authority be claimed for it. He finds the standard for right 
conduct in what he calls "absolute ethics," by which he 
means a description of the conduct of fully-evolved man in 
fully evolved surroundings. In this state there will be com- 
plete adaptation between the individual and his environment 
so that, even if action is still possible, no choice of better or 
worse will remain. The system of absolute ethics is worked 
out in the succeeding parts of the work, but with very 
meagre success. Indeed, at the end, the author is fain to 
admit that evolution had not helped him to the extent he 
had anticipated. 

In his ethical, and still more in his political, writings we 
see the supreme value set by Spencer on the individual, and 
the very restricted functions which he allowed to the state or 
other organised community of individuals. Perhaps the 
point is not easy to reconcile with the doctrine of evolution 
as otherwise expounded by him. But there were two things 
which seem to have been more fundamental in his thought 



Spencer*s Ethical Theory 265 

than evolution itself. One of these has been already referred 
to as the group of ideas which may be described as mechan- 
ism and which is exhibited both in the basis and in the plan 
of his whole structure. The other is his strong bias towards 
individualism. If the former may plausibly be connected 
with his training as an engineer, the origin of the latter may, 
with still greater probability, be traced to the doctrines 
current in that circle of liberalism in which he was nurtured. 
He wrote political essays and a political treatise {Social 
Statics) before his mind seems to have been attracted by the 
conception of evolution; and, although in some points he 
afterwards modified the teaching of that treatise, its essential 
ideas and its spirit characterise his latest writings on political 
theory. It showed ingenuity rather than insight on his part 
to bring them within the grasp of the evolution doctrine ; but, 
in spite of many criticisms, he held steadfastly to his doctrine 
of what has been called "administrative nihilism.' * 

No other writer rivalled Spencer's attempt at a recon- 
struction of the whole range of human thought. But many 
of his contemporaries preceded or followed him in applying 
the new doctrine of evolution to the problems of life, mind, 
and society. Some of these were men of science, who felt 
that an instrument had been put into their hands for extend- 
ing its frontiers; others were primarily interested in moral 
and political questions, or in philosophy generally, and evolu- 
tion seemed to provide them with a key to old difficulties 
and a new view of the unity of reality. Darwin himself, 
though he never posed as a philosopher, was aware of the 
revolutionary effect which his researches had upon men's 
views of the universe as a whole ; what was more important, 
he made a number of shrewd and suggestive observations on 
morals and on psychology in his Descent of Man and also in 
his later volume The Expression of the Emotions. But his con- 
tributions were only incidental to his biological work. Others, 
writing under the intellectual influence which he originated, 
were concerned more directly with problems of philosophy. 



266 The Victorian Era 

Among these writers the first place may be given to 
George Henry Lewes, although in his earlier works he was 
influenced by Comte, not by Darwin. Lewes was a man of 
marvellous literary versatility as essayist, novelist, biog- 
rapher, and expositor of popular science. This versatility 
also marks his work in philosophy. At first Comte' s influence 
was supreme. His philosophical publications began with 
The Biographical History of Philosophy (1845 — 6), a slight and 
inaccurate attempt to survey a vast field, and apparently 
designed to show that the field was not worth the tillage ; later 
editions of this work, however, not only greatly increased 
its extent and removed many blemishes but showed the 
author's ability to appreciate other points of view than that 
from which he had started. After an interval he produced 
books entitled Comte 1 s Philosophy of the Sciences (1853), and 
A ristotle: a chapter from the history of science ( 1 864) . But, for 
a long time, Lewes had been at work on investigations of a 
more constructive and original kind, partly philosophical 
and partly scientific, the results of which were not fully pub- 
lished at the time of his death in 1878. These results were 
contained in Problems of Life and Mind, the first two volumes 
of which, entitled The Foundations of a Creed, appeared in 
1874 — 5, and the fifth and final volume in 1879. 

In this work the author has advanced far from his early 
Comtism, and it shows in many respects a much more ade- 
quate comprehension of philosophical problems than can be 
found in Spencer, whose knowledge of the history of thought 
was limited and sketchy, and whose criticisms of other 
philosophers were nearly always external — in the worst sense 
of the word. But Lewes had fitted himself for writing, not 
only by original researches in physiology and related branches 
of science, but also by a considerable and sympathetic study 
of modern philosophy. He is thus able to appeal to other 
readers than those who have limited their intellectual en- 
quiries to a predetermined range. He rejected as "metem- 
pirical" what lay beyond possible experience; but he would 
not, like Spencer, affect to derive comfort from the unknow- 



Thomas Henry Huxley 267 

able. There was room for metaphysics, he thought, as the 
science of the highest generalities, or the codification of the 
most abstract laws of cause, and he sought to transform it by 
reducing it to the method of science. In working out this 
aim, he relied on and illustrated the distinction between 
immediate experience or "feeling" and the symbols or con- 
ceptual constructions used for its codification. He also 
criticised the current mechanical interpretation of organic 
processes, holding that sensibility was inherent in nervous 
substance. And he was one of the first to emphasise the 
importance of the social factor in the development of mind 
and to exhibit its working. He defended the conception of 
the "general mind, " not as expressing a separate entity, but 
as a symbol; and, for him, the individual mind also was a 
symbol. The problems with which he dealt were partly 
general — enquiries into knowledge, truth, and certitude — 
partly psychophysical and psychological. His Problems 
shows the prolonged and eager reflection of an active mind. 
In it the multifarious writings of many years were reduced 
and expanded. But it may be doubted whether the reduc- 
tion was carried far enough. There is a good deal of repeti- 
tion, but hardly a central argument; the separate discussions 
are often important and suggestive; but the fundamental 
position regarding subject and object does not seem to be 
adequately defended or even made perfectly clear. Lewes 
had more philosophical insight than Spencer, but he had not 
the latter' s architectonic genius. 

Thomas Henry Huxley, the distinguished zoologist and 
advocate of Darwinism, made many incursions into philo- 
sophy, and always with effect. From his youth he had 
studied its problems unsystematically ; he had a way of going 
straight to the point in any discussion; and, judged by a 
literary standard, he was a great master of expository and 
argumentative prose. Apart from his special work in science, 
he had an important influence upon English thought through 
his numerous addresses and essays on topics of science, 
philosophy, religion, and politics. Among the most impor- 



268 The Victorian Era 

tant of his papers relevant here are those entitled "The 
Physical Basis of Life" (1868), and "On the Hypothesis that 
Animals are Automata" (1874), along with a monograph on 
Hume (1879) an d tne Romanes lecture Ethics and Evolution 
( I ^93). Huxley is credited with the invention of the term 
"agnosticism" to describe his philosophical position: it ex- 
presses his attitude towards certain traditional questions 
without giving any clear delimitation of the frontiers of the 
knowable. He regards consciousness as a collateral effect of 
certain physical causes, and only an effect — never also a 
cause. But, on the other hand, he holds that matter is only 
a symbol, and that all physical phenomena can be analysed 
into states of consciousness. This leaves mental facts in the 
peculiar position of being collateral effects of something that, 
after all, is only a symbol for a mental fact ; and the contra- 
diction is left without remark. His contributions to ethics 
are still more remarkable. In a paper entitled "Science and 
Morals" (1888), he concluded that the safety of morality 
lay "in a real and living belief in that fixed order of nature 
which sends social disorganisation on the track of immoral- 
ity." His Romanes lecture reveals a different tone. In it 
the moral order is contrasted with the cosmic order; evolu- 
tion shows constant struggle; instead of looking to it for 
moral guidance, he "repudiates the gladiatorial theory of 
existence." He saw that the facts of historical process did 
not constitute validity for moral conduct; and his plain 
language compelled others to see the same truth. But he 
exaggerated the opposition between them and did not leave 
room for the influence of moral ideas as a factor in the 
historical process. 

Another man of science, William Kingdon Clifford, pro- 
fessor of mathematics in London, dealt in occasional essays 
with some central points in the theory of knowledge, ethics, 
and religion. In these essays he aimed at an interpretation 
of life in the light of the new science. There was insight as 
well as courage in all he wrote, and it was conveyed in a 
brilliant style. But his work was cut short by his early death 



Leslie Stephen 269 

in 1879, and his contributions to philosophy remain sugges- 
tions only. 

It was natural that men of science with a philosophical 
turn of mind should be among the first to work out the more 
general consequences of the theory of evolution. But the 
wide range which the theory might cover was fairly obvious, 
and was seen by others who approached philosophy from 
the point of view of studies other than the natural sciences. 
Foremost among these was Leslie Stephen, a man of letters 
keenly interested in the moral sciences. The portion of his 
writings which bear upon philosophy is small only in relation 
to his total literary output. His History of English Thought 
in the Eighteenth Century (1876) places the philosophers and 
moralists in their due position in the whole literary activity 
of the period, and is penetrating and usually just in its esti- 
mate of their work. A further stage of the same history — 
The English Utilitarians (1900) — was completed towards the 
end of his life. His own independent contribution is given in 
The Science of Ethics (1882). After Spencer's Data, this is 
the first book which worked out an ethical view determined 
by the theory of evolution. As such it is significant. The 
author had sat at the feet of John Stuart Mill ; he had eagerly 
welcomed Darwin as an ally of the empirical and utilitarian 
creed ; but he came to see that more extensive changes were 
necessary. Spencer's compromise between hedonism and 
evolutionism failed to satisfy him, and he found the ethical 
bearing of evolution better expressed by the conception of 
social vitality than by that of pleasure. The great merit of 
the work consists in its presentation of the social content of 
morality in the individual mind as well as in the community ; 
but it does not sufficiently recognise the distinction between 
the historical process traced by the evolution theory and the 
ethical validity which evolution is assumed to possess. 

The transformation of the biological sciences by the 
theory of evolution was connected with a wider movement, 



270 The Victorian Era 

which consisted in the greatly extended use of the historical 
method in explaining the nature of things. This applies 
chiefly to the social sciences. It is to be remembered that 
both Darwin and Wallace owed the suggestion of their hypo- 
thesis of natural selection to a work on social theory. The 
underlying doctrine was, simply, that facts were to be under- 
stood by tracing their origins and historical connections. 
How far this historical understanding could take the enquirer 
became the point at issue between what may be called the 
evolution philosophy and its critics : it may be expressed in 
the question whether or not origin determines validity. It 
was only gradually, however, that the point of controversy 
became clear; and meanwhile the application of the historical 
method vastly aided the understanding of the social order. 
In this reference the treatise entitled Ancient Law (1861) by 
Sir Henry Maine marks an epoch in the study of law and 
institutions, and it had a much wider influence upon thought 
generally by furthering the use of the method which it em- 
ployed. An early example of the application of the same 
method in economics may be found in the series of essays by 
Thomas Edward Clifle Leslie, republished as Essays in Poli- 
tical Economy (1888) ; and the historical side of economics has 
subsequently been exhaustively worked. 

Walter Bagehot's Physics and Politics (1869) is still more 
closely connected with the doctrine of evolution. It is de- 
scribed on the title-page as "thoughts on the application of 
the principles of natural selection and inheritance to political 
society." Luminous and suggestive though these studies 
are, it cannot be said that the influence of the theory of evo- 
lution expresses the leading characteristic of Bagehot's mind, 
especially as shown in his other political and economic works 
— The English Constitution (1867), Lombard Street (1873), and 
Economic Studies (1880). It was his insight into the actual 
forces, especially the human forces, at work that chiefly dis- 
tinguished his treatment. Whereas even Mill looked upon 
economic and political processes as due to the composition 
of a few simple forces such as desire of wealth and aversion 



Henry Sidgwick 271 

from labour, Bagehot knew the actual men who were doing 
the work, and he recognised the complexity of their motives 
and the degree in which they were influenced by habit, 
tradition, and imitation. In this way he gave a great im- 
pulse to realistic study, as contrasted with the abstract 
method of the older economics and politics. 

VI. Henry Sidgwick and Shadworth Hodgson 

These writers had not much in common beyond the two 
points which have led to their being placed together here. 
They both saw that evolution was not an "open sesame " to 
the secrets of philosophy, and neither owed allegiance to the 
idealist movement which rose to prominence in their time. 
They were probably the ablest and most influential writers 
who made independent advances on lines more closely con- 
nected with the older English tradition. 

Sidgwick taught philosophy for many years at Cam- 
bridge, and held the chair of moral philosophy there from 
1883 until 1900, the year of his death. His reputation as a 
philosophical writer was made by his first book, The Methods 
of Ethics (1874). He afterwards published treatises on a 
similar scale on political economy and on politics ; and, after 
his death, various occasional articles were issued in collected 
form, and a considerable series of books was compiled from 
his manuscripts, dealing with general philosophy, with con- 
temporary ethical systems, and with political constitutions. 
Within certain limits Sidgwick may be regarded as a follower 
of John Stuart Mill, at least in ethics, politics, and economics. 
In these subjects he took Mill's views as the basis of his own 
criticisms and reflections, and he accepted the utilitarian 
criterion. At the same time he gave much more weight than 
Mill had done to the intellectualist tradition in philosophy. 
He saw that the empirical philosophy was based on concep- 
tions which it was unable to justify by its customary method 
of tracing their origin in experience. This did not lead, 
however, to any agreement with Kant's analysis of know- 



272 The Victorian Era 

ledge. He was an adverse and somewhat unsympathetic 
critic of the Kantian theory. He inclined, rather, to a return 
to the "natural realism " of Thomas Reid, on the question of 
the knowledge of external reality; and his ethical doctrine 
includes a synthesis of the views of Clarke and Butler with 
those of Mill. 

His first book remains his most striking contribution to 
philosophy and the most accurate index of his philosophical 
attitude. In spite of his utilitarian sympathies, its starting- 
point and most fundamental ideas show the influence of a 
different type of thought. He starts with the fundamental 
notion of "ought " or duty, and argues that enquiries into its 
origin in our consciousness do not affect its validity. The 
knowledge that there is something right or rational to be 
done depends, in the last resort, upon an intuition or imme- 
diate view of what is right or reasonable. All the old argu- 
ments of the utilitarians are swept away; the analysis of 
conduct into pursuit of pleasure is shown not only to be itself 
incorrect, but to be irreconcilable with the acceptance of 
general happiness as the ethical end. His own utilitarianism 
is based upon a new synthesis of intuitionism and empiricism. 
Here enters his central doctrine of the ' ' axioms of the prac- 
tical reason." These do not prescribe any concrete end as 
good — that has to be determined in another way; but they 
are formal principles eternally valid whatever the nature of 
goodness may prove to be. To these formal principles are 
given the names prudence, benevolence, and justice ; but they 
include much less than is usually covered by these terms and 
may, perhaps, be adequately summed up in the statement 
that neither the time at which, nor the person by whom, a 
good is enjoyed affects the degree of its goodness. From the 
distinction and yet equal validity of the axioms of prudence 
and benevolence, Sidgwick's ethical theory terminates in a 
doctrine of "the dualism of the practical reason." It would 
appear, however, that this dualism was not adequately 
tested by him and that it really arises from the ambiguity 
of the term prudence. Prudence may mean either "regard 



Henry Sidgwick 273 

for one's own good on the whole" or (what is not the same 
thing) the principle that "hereafter as such is neither less 
nor more valuable than now." Both forms of statement are 
used by Sidgwick ; but only the latter has a claim to express 
an absolute ethical principle ; and it is not inconsistent with 
the axiom of benevolence. The other side of his utilitari- 
anism — the reduction of goodness to terms of pleasure — is 
carried out by analysing conscious life into its elements and 
showing that each in its turn (except pleasure), when taken 
alone, cannot be regarded as ultimate good. This analytic 
method is characteristic of Sidgwick 's thinking, as it was of 
that of most of his predecessors — intuitionist as well as 
empirical. It rests on the assumption that the nature of a 
thing can be completely ascertained by examination of the 
separate elements into which it can be distinguished by re- 
flection — an assumption which was definitely discarded by 
the contemporary school of idealists, and on which the 
evolutionist writers also do not seem to have relied. 

As was natural, therefore, Sidgwick did not produce a 
system of philosophy. He made many suggestions towards 
construction, but, in the main, his work was critical. He was 
severely critical of the attempts at speculative construction 
made in his day, and he carried on some controversies in 
which his subtlety and wit had full play : neither Spencer nor 
Green was his match in dialectics. It was not, however, of 
systems and theories only that he was a great critic. His 
powers are seen at their highest when he analysed and de- 
scribed the moral opinions of ordinary men, not as they are 
reflectively set down in philosophical books, but as they are 
expressed in life, compact of reason and tradition, fused by 
emotion and desire. The third book of his Methods of Ethics 
consists, in large part, of an examination of the morality of 
commonsense. It is an elucidation and sifting of the ideas 
under which men act, often without clear consciousness of 
them ; and it shows the sympathetic apprehension of a mind 
which shares the thoughts it describes and can yet see them 
in perspective and sum up their significance. Both the ex- 



274 The Victorian Era 

cellence of the matter and the distinction of the style should 
give at least this portion of his work a permanent place in 
literature. 

Shad worth Hodgson's life was an example of rare devo- 
tion to philosophy. He had no profession and filled no public 
office, but spent his time in systematic reflection and writing ; 
and his long life gave him the opportunity of reviewing, con- 
firming, and improving upon his first thoughts. There were 
two periods in his activity. In the former of these he pub- 
lished three books: Time and Space in 1865, The Theory of 
Practice in 1870, and The Philosophy of Reflection in 1878. 
Shortly thereafter he was instrumental in founding "the 
Aristotelian Society for the systematic study of philosophy, " 
and he remained its president for fourteen years. This led 
to contact with other minds who looked at the same subjects 
from different points of view. He read many papers to the 
society, which were published in pamphlet form and in its 
Proceedings, and he built up his own system afresh in the 
light of familiar criticism. It took final form in The M eta- 
physic of Experience, a work of four volumes published in 
1898. 

As an analysis of experience, Hodgson's philosophy falls 
into line with a characteristic English tradition. It agrees 
with this tradition also in taking the simple feeling as the 
ultimate datum of experience. But, even here, and wherever 
there is experience, there is a distinction to be drawn — not 
the traditional distinction between subject and object, but 
that between consciousness and its object. There are always 
two aspects in any bit of experience — that of the object itself 
or the objective aspect, and that of the awareness of it or the 
subjective aspect ; and these two are connected by the rela- 
tion of knowledge. The sciences are concerned with the 
objective aspect only; philosophy has to deal with the sub- 
jective aspect, or the conscious process which is fundamental 
and common to all the various objects. Beyond this con- 
scious reference there is nothing. "The mirage of absolute 



Shad worth Hodgson 275 

existence, wholly apart from knowledge, is a common-sense 
prejudice." 1 Consciousness is commensurate with being; 
all existence has a subjective aspect. But this doctrine, he 
holds, is misinterpreted when mind and body are supposed 
to interact or when mental and bodily facts are regarded as 
parallel aspects of the same substance. In psychology Hodg- 
son may be called a materialist, unfit as that name would be 
to describe his final philosophical attitude. Ideas do not 
determine one another, nor does desire cause volition; the 
only real condition known to us is matter. And yet matter 
itself is a composite existence; it can be analysed into em- 
pirical percepts ; and therefore it is itself conditioned by some- 
thing which is not material : the very term existence implies 
relativity to some sort of consciousness or other. This is the 
conclusion of the general analysis of experience. Of the un- 
seen world which lies beyond the material part of the world 
we cannot, he contends, have any speculative knowledge. 
But the ethical judgment and our own moral nature bring us 
into practical relation with that unseen world and thus per- 
mit a positive, although not a speculative, knowledge of it. 2 
In this way, in the final issue of his philosophy as well as in 
its fundamental positions, Hodgson regards himself as 
correcting and completing the work of Kant. 

VII. Idealists 

The latter half of the nineteenth century was marked by 
the work of a number of writers who were influenced by the 
speculations which, in Germany, had turned the results of 
Kant's criticism into a direction which he had not antici- 
pated. This influence, shared by them all, and their con- 
stant controversy with current empirical philosophy united 
these writers into what may be termed a school; and this 
school is sometimes described as neo-Kantian, more com- 
monly as Hegelian or neo-Hegelian. But its members de- 
scribe it simply as idealism, though it is an idealism of a form 

1 Metaphysic of Experience, i., p. 17. 2 Ibid., iv., p. 401. 



276 The Victorian Era 

new in English thought. Before them Kant's speculative 
successors had not obtained currency in England, unless 
perhaps in a slight measure through some of the utterances 
of Coleridge; and the powerful influence of Hamilton's 
criticism had been almost sufficient to put a ban on what he 
called "the philosophy of the unconditioned." 

The first important work of the new movement was The 
Institutes of Metaphysic (1854) by James Frederick Ferrier, 
professor at St. Andrews. Before this date he had written 
a number of philosophical articles, and in particular a series 
of papers entitled "The Philosophy of Consciousness, " which 
showed the trend of his thinking. After his death these were 
collected and published together along with a series of lec- 
tures as Lectures on Greek Philosophy and other philosophical 
remains (1866). As a historian of philosophy Ferrier did not 
pretend to exceptional research; but he had a remarkable 
power of entering into the mind of earlier thinkers and of 
giving a living presentation of their views. The history of 
philosophy was, for him, no mere record of discarded systems 
but "philosophy itself taking its time." He was a sympa- 
thetic student also of the German philosophers banned by his 
friend Hamilton. It is difficult to trace any direct influence 
of Hegel upon his own doctrine, and indeed he said that he 
could not understand Hegel. But both his earlier and his 
later writings have an affinity with Fichte — especially in 
their central doctrine: the stress laid on self -consciousness, 
and its distinction from the "mental states" with which the 
psychologist is concerned. This doctrine connects him with 
Berkeley also. He was one of the first to appreciate the true 
nature of Berkeley's thought, as not a mere transition-stage 
between Locke and Hume, but as a discovery of the spiritual 
nature of reality. 

The philosophy which he worked out in The Institutes of 
Metaphysic is, however, strikingly original. He claimed that 
it was ' ' Scottish to the core." But it is very different from 
the traditional Scottish philosophy. It disclaims all connec- 
tion with psychology. He even formulates a false and 



James Frederick Ferrier 277 

psychological theorem as the counterpart of each true and 
metaphysical theorem. And this reiterated opposition, it 
must be confessed, grows a little wearisome, and can be 
excused only by the backward state of psychology, and its 
confusion with philosophy, at the time when the book was 
written. Further, the Scottish philosophy relied on intui- 
tion or immediate apprehension of reality; Ferrier's method 
is that of rational deduction from a first principle. Philo- 
sophy is "reasoned truth, " he says; and "it is more proper 
that philosophy should be reasoned, than that it should be 
true." Unfortunately he takes Spinoza's method as his 
model, though he does not follow the model in all details. 
There is no array of definitions, axioms, and postulates, but 
only propositions, each deduced from the preceding. Thus 
a heavy weight is thrown on the first proposition of the series. 
This proposition formulates the primary law or condition of 
all knowledge, and is stated in the words, "Along with what- 
ever any intelligence knows it must, as the ground or condi- 
tion of its knowledge, have some cognisance of itself." What 
follows is little more than the elaboration of this statement. 
Ferrier has not only an epistemology, or theory of knowledge, 
but also an agnoiology, or theory of ignorance, the main 
doctrine of which is that we can be ignorant only of what can 
possibly be known. Through this, in his ontology or theory 
of being, he reaches the conclusion that absolute existence L 
"a supreme and infinite and everlasting mind in synthesis 
with all things." Ferrier's writings had, and continue to 
have, a considerable reputation, yet a reputation hardly 
commensurate with their philosophical insight and perfect 
style. Perhaps the formalism of his method counteracted 
the lucidity of the thought. Soon after his death (1864) 
English philosophy came under the influence of the more 
comprehensive genius of Hegel. 

The first English work directly due to the influence of 
Hegel was The Secret of Hegel (1865) by James Hutchison 
Stirling. Educated as a physician, he first heard of Hegel 



278 . The Victorian Era 

in accidental conversation. Hegel was described as the 
reconciler of philosophy and religion, and Stirling, fas- 
cinated by the thought, soon afterwards threw up his prac- 
tice, settled for some years on the continent — in Germany 
and in France — and devoted himself with ardour to philo- 
sophical study, especially to the mastery of Hegel's system. 
He returned to publish the results of his work; and, although 
he wrote many books afterwards — especially an important 
Text-book to Kant (1881) — The Secret of Hegel remains his 
greatest work. It consists of translation, commentary, in- 
troduction, and original discourse; and it shows the process 
by which the author approached and grappled with his sub- 
ject. Sometimes it is as difficult as its original; more fre- 
quently it illuminates Hegel both by a persistent effort of 
thought and by occasional flashes of insight. Its style is 
characteristic. Altogether lacking in the placid flow of the 
academic commentator, and suggesting the influence of 
Carlyle, it is irregular but forceful and imaginative, a fit 
medium for the thinking which it expressed. What Stirling 
meant by the " secret" of Hegel was presumably the relation 
of Hegel's philosophy to that of Kant. In Hegel's construc- 
tion he found a method and point of view which justified the 
fundamental ideas of religion, and, at the same time, made 
clear the one-sidedness of the conceptions of the ' ' age of en- 
lightenment, " at the end of which Kant stood, still ham- 
pered by its negations and abstractions. And Stirling's 
favourite and most lively criticisms were directed against 
the apostles of the enlightenment and their followers of the 
nineteenth century. 

Stirling was first in the field, and, although cut off from 
any academic position, he continued to exercise a strong 
intellectual influence. Independently of him, and soon after 
he began to publish, the influence of Hegel was shown by a 
number of other writers, most of whom were connected with 
Oxford or Glasgow. Like Stirling, they brought out the ideas 
in Kant which pointed to Hegel's view; but, on the other 
hand, most of them paid little attention to, or altogether 



Thomas Hill Green 279 

disregarded, the details of the Hegelian method. Of these 
writers one of the earliest and, in some respects, the most 
important was Thomas Hill Green, professor of moral philo- 
sophy at Oxford. His work was constructive in aim and, to a 
large extent, in achievement ; and it was inspired by a belief 
in the importance of right thinking for life. The latter 
characteristic Green shared with most of the writers who 
sympathised with his philosophical views, and it accounted 
for much of the enthusiasm with which these views were 
received. His constructive work, however, was preceded 
by a very thorough criticism. He saw that it was necessary, 
first of all, to expose the assumptions and inconsistencies 
involved in the systems of Mill and Spencer, and to show 
that these systems were derived from the philosophy of 
Hume. Green's dissection of the latter appeared in 1874 i n 
the form of two elaborate "introductions" to a new edition 
of Hume's Treatise. This work, as he confesses, was "an 
irksome labour." He deals at length with Locke and Hume, 
more shortly with Berkeley and some of the moralists ; and he 
follows these writers from point to point of their argument 
with unwearying, though sometimes wearisome, persistence. 
But he was an unsympathetic critic. Locke and Hume were 
rather careless of the niceties of terminology, and some of the 
contradictions which he finds are perhaps only verbal, and 
might have been avoided by a change of expression. Enough 
remain, however, amply to justify his accusation that their 
thought was full of incoherences; and, if these had been 
brought into clearer relief, and distinguished from merely 
verbal inconsistencies, the effectiveness of his criticism might 
have been increased. But he did succeed in showing "that 
the philosophy based on the abstraction of feeling, in regard 
to morals, no less than to nature, was with Hume played out. ' ' 
He appealed to "Englishmen under five-and-twenty " to 
close their Mill and Spencer and open their Kant and Hegel ; 
and this appeal marks an epoch in English thought in the 
nineteenth century. 

In the years following the "introductions" to Hume, 



280 The Victorian Era 

Green published some occasional articles on philosophical 
topics. He also exerted a great influence by his academic 
lectures, the more important of which are printed in his 
collected Works (three volumes, 1 885 — 8) . His greatest book, 
Prolegomena to Ethics, appeared in 1 883, the year after his 
death. This book does not profess to be a system either of 
metaphysics or of ethics; but it supplies the groundwork 
for such a system. It is a vindication of the spiritual nature 
of the world and of man. Neither nature nor man can be 
constructed out of the sensations or feelings which formed the 
data of the empirical philosophers. Our knowledge "pre- 
supposes" that there is a connected world to be known. 
The relations involved, inexplicable on empirical methods 
can be understood only as implying the action of mind. 
"The action of one self -conditioning and self -determining 
mind" is, therefore, a postulate of all knowledge, and our 
knowledge is a "reproduction" of this activity in or as the 
mind of man. In the same way our moral activity is a re- 
production in us of the one eternal mind. Under all the limi- 
tations of organic life and of the time-process generally, the 
mind of man carries with it the characteristic, inexplicable on 
the theory of naturalism, of ■ ' being an object to itself. ' ' This 
position is not to be established by deductive or inductive 
methods ; in this sense it cannot be proved. But it is a point 
of view from which — and from which alone — we can under- 
stand both the world and ourselves and see how it is that "we 
are and do what we consciously are and do." In the later 
books of his Prolegomena this doctrine is applied to the inter- 
pretation of the history of the moral life and of moral ideas ; 
and this portion of his work shows his powers as a writer at 
their best. In other writings the same conception is applied 
to social and religious questions. It is conspicuous in his 
Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, where he 
maintains that will, not force, is the basis of the state, and 
gives a fresh reading of the doctrine of the "general will." 
In his metaphysics, Green does not follow the method of 
Hegel's dialectic; and in his reading of history there is no 



Green and Wallace 281 

trace of the Hegelian theory that development in time follows 
the same stages as logical development. The gradual steps 
by which the realisation of reason or of self is brought about 
in the time-process are not investigated. Only, it is assumed 
that the process is purposive and that history is the "repro- 
duction ' ' of the eternal mind. How it comes about that error 
and 'moral evil affect the process is not explained, and the 
metaphor of "reproduction, " as well as the whole relation of 
the time-process to eternal reality, is left somewhat vague. 

Of the numerous writers who represent a type of thought 
similar to Green's in origin and outlook only a few can be 
mentioned here. In 1874, the year in which Green's "intro- 
ductions" to Hume were published, there appeared also 
The Logic of Hegel, translated from the latter's Encyklopddie 
by William Wallace, who was afterwards Green's successor 
in the chair of moral philosophy at Oxford. A second edition 
of this work, in which the introductory matter was consider- 
ably extended, was issued in 1892; and this was followed, in 
1894, by Hegel's Philosophy of Mind and in 1898 (after the 
author's death), by Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology 
and Ethics. Wallace devoted himself more directly than his 
associates to the elucidation of Hegel's thought; but it may 
be doubted whether he himself adhered any more closely than 
they did to the details of the dialectic. The prolegomena and 
introductory essays, by which his translations were prefaced, 
are not merely explanatory of difficulties. They have often 
the character of original interpretations; they approach the 
subject from different points of view and show a rare power of 
selecting essential factors. Wallace had wide intellectual 
sympathies and found matter of agreement with philosophers 
of different schools ; but all, in his hands, led towards a cen- 
tral idealism. His work consisted in pointing out the various 
avenues of approach to the temple of idealism, rather than in 
unveiling its mysteries. 

In An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (1880), 
John Caird, principal of the University of Glasgow, pro- 
duced a work, original in manner, but essentially Hegelian 



282 The Victorian Era 

in doctrine. A similar character marked all the work of his 
younger brother, Edward Caird, professor of moral philo- 
sophy at Glasgow, and afterwards master of Balliol College, 
Oxford. The influence of Edward Caird rivalled that of his 
friend Green, and their teaching was in fundamental agree- 
ment. Caird, however, had a facility of literary expression 
such as Green did not possess; he was also more inclined to 
attack questions by the method of tracing the historical de- 
velopment of thought. His first important work was A 
Critical Account of the Philosophy of Kant (1877), which was 
superseded by The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant 
(two volumes, 1 889) . This work is a triumph of philosophical 
exposition and criticism, in the interests of a type of thought 
different from Kant's own. Based upon a mastery of the 
whole range of Kantian scholarship, it brings into relief the 
leading ideas by which Kant himself was guided, and, 
through criticism of his arguments, gives an interpretation 
of it as tending, when consistently worked out, towards a 
system of speculative idealism. A brilliant and sympathetic 
exposition is contained in his monograph on Hegel (1883). 
His Giflord lectures, The Evolution of Religion (1893), deal 
less than his other works with the criticism of philosophers ; 
they are a study of the nature of religion, especially as ex- 
hibited in the development of the Christian faith. 

The writings of Francis Herbert Bradley gave a new direc- 
tion to the idealistic movement of the nineteenth century. 
His achievement has been differently viewed : sometimes as 
being the finest exposition of idealism, sometimes as mark- 
ing its dissolution. His first philosophical work, Ethical 
Studies, appeared in 1876, about the same date as the first 
books of Green and Caird. It is full of brilliant criticism of 
conventional ethical ideas. The manner was different; but 
the doctrine seemed to agree with that which was beginning 
to be taught in the lecture-rooms. Here also "self-realisa- 
tion," that is, the realisation of the "true self," was the 
watchword. His Principles of Logic, published in 1883, 
broke new ground and showed also a further development 



Francis Herbert Bradley 283 

of the dialectical manner. The inadequacy of the "particu- 
lar, " the implication of the "universal" in all knowledge, 
were familiar enough, but the defects of empirical logic had 
never been exposed with such depth of insight, such subtlety 
of 'reasoning, such severity of phrase. The work was a tri- 
umph for the idealistic theory of knowledge. It is note- 
worthy that these two books have never been reprinted in 
England, presumably because the author became more or less 
dissatisfied with their teaching. There is, at least, a differ- 
ence of emphasis in the teaching of his next and greatest 
work, Appearance and Reality (1893), which has been allowed 
to pass through several editions. 

This remarkable book has probably exerted more in- 
fluence upon metaphysical thinking in English-speaking 
countries than any other treatise of the last thirty years. 
But no summary can convey a clear idea of its teaching. 
The conceptions of popular thought and of metaphysics 
alike are in it subjected to detailed, relentless criticism. 
Even the distinction, within the book, between the chapters 
devoted to "appearance" and those described as "reality" 
seems artificial, for everything is found to be riddled with 
contradictions. And these contradictions all belong to our 
thought because it is relational. Green had held that ex- 
perience requires relations, and had argued thence to the 
need for a relating mind as the principle of reality. Bradley 
too insists that "for thought itfiat is not relative is nothing" 
but he draws the very different conclusion that ' ' our experi- 
ence, where relational, is not true." Of this doctrine all the 
brilliant disquisitions that follow are applications, with the 
exception of the author's own assertions about the absolute, 
which however, being relational, must also be affected by the 
same vice of contradiction. If his argument about relations 
is valid, the idealism of Green and Caird falls to the ground. 
His method is more akin to Hegel's than theirs was; but he 
also ignores the Hegelian triad; he does not attempt any 
consecutive evolution of the categories; even his doctrine 
of "degrees of reality" is more Spinozistic than Hegelian. 



284 Tne Victorian Era 

As a whole, the book is a great original achievement — a 
highly abstract dialectical exercise, in which the validity of 
every argument depends upon the fundamental position that 
relations necessarily involve contradiction. A later book, 
Essays on Truth and Reality (1914), deals in great part with 
controversies which belong to the twentieth century ; without 
giving up the positions of the earlier work, it is much less 
negative in its tendency and more devoted to the discovery 
of elements of truth than to the exposure of contradictions. 
The work of Bernard Bosanquet has affinity on funda- 
mental points with that of Bradley. Before the turn of the 
century he had made his mark by a comprehensive treatise 
on Logic (1888) and by a book on the Philosophical Theory 
of the State (1899) as well as by other writings. But the full 
development of his philosophical views is contained in two 
books (The Principle of Individuality and Value, 1912; The 
Value and Destiny of the Individual, 191 3) which belong to 
the twentieth century. 

VIII. Other Writers 

In the latter part of the nineteenth century there were 
other philosophical tendencies at work than those already 
mentioned. There were idealist writers whose idealism was 
of a different type, resembling Berkeley's rather than Hegel's, 
and who are sometimes called personal idealists ; there was a 
movement of reaction from the type of idealism last described 
in the direction of philosophical realism or naturalism; and 
there were indications of the new movements of thought 
which have characterised the early years of the twentieth 
century. 

Among the writers classed as personal idealists may be 
counted Alexander Campbell Fraser. His philosophical 
career, as student, professor, and thinker, began before the 
Victorian era and lasted into the present reign. He was a 
pupil of Hamilton at Edinburgh, was for ten years professor 
of philosophy in New College there and succeeded to the 



Alexander Campbell Fraser 285 

university chair on Hamilton's death in 1856. His first book, 
Essays in Philosophy, was published in 1856, his last, a small 
monograph entitled Berkeley and Spiritual Realism, in 1508. 
Apart from minor works, among which special mention 
should be made of his monographs on Locke (1890) and 
Berkeley (1 881), he is best known as the editor of the stand- 
ard editions of Berkeley's Works (1871) and of Locke's Essay 
(1894), an d as tne author of Gifford lectures on The Philo- 
sophy of Theism (1896). He also wrote an interesting and 
valuable account of his life and views entitled Biographia 
Philosophica (1904). 

For a great many years, Fraser, Caird, and Bain power- 
fully affected philosophical thought in Scotland through 
their university teaching. Owing to the position of philo- 
sophy in the academic curriculum, their influence upon the 
wider intellectual life of the country was almost equally 
great, though less easy to trace with any exactness. From 
Bain, his pupils learned precision in thinking and an interest 
in psychology as a science, but a somewhat limited com- 
prehension of philosophical problems. Caird gave an insight 
into the history of thought and provided a point of view 
from which the world and man's life might be understood; 
many of his pupils have shown in their writings that they 
had learned his language and were able to develop and apply 
his ideas. Fraser did not teach a system or found a school ; 
he awakened and stimulated thought, without controlling 
its direction; he called forth in his hearers a sense of the 
mysteries of existence, and he encouraged in many the spirit 
of reflection. He had no system; but his thought was essen- 
tially constructive, though the construction was based on an 
almost Humean scepticism. On one point, however, he 
never yielded to sceptical analysis — the reality of the self as 
conscious activity. He found the same thought in Berkeley, 
and he may almost be said to have rediscovered Berkeley for 
modern readers. Of the world beyond self he could find no 
theory which could be satisfactorily established by strict 
reasoning. But he saw (as Hume saw in his first work) that 



e86 The Victorian Era 

science has its assumptions as well as theology. In particular 
he looked upon the postulate of uniformity as an act of moral 
faith in the rationality of the universe, and it was as a "ven- 
ture of faith" that he interpreted the universe as grounded 
in the reason and goodness of God. 

Philosophy was the supreme interest of Simon Laurie, 
though his career as an educationalist restricted his pursuit 
of that interest to hours of leisure. In the middle of the 
sixties he published two contributions to ethics. Nearly 
twenty years later he issued, under the pseudonym of Scotus 
Novanticus, two books — one on metaphysics, the other on 
ethics: the former being described by him as "a return to 
dualism." When, after another twenty years, the fruits of 
his reflection were garnered in two volumes of meditations 
entitled Synthetica (1906), his system might still be called, 
as it has been called, natural realism. 

But the realism is "transfigured" by the vision of an 
Absolute which is in all things and through which they form 
a unity. His process of thought is a dialectic — not unin- 
fluenced by Hegel, yet differing from his in method and 
results. It is less formal and systematic — it is not the slave 
of a triad. The starting-point is individual experience — ' ' the 
feeling of a 'somewhat' which is not the being that feels." 
Here is a subject-object ; and criticism of it forms his method 
of advance. The whole argument rests on a criticism of 
knowledge — from pure feeling, through ascending planes or 
levels, until the plane of reason is reached, "and passes again 
into feeling as now supra-rational intuition." The absolute 
is always given, but it is apprehended with increasing clear- 
ness though never perfectly. "The God whom we have 
been trying to unveil does not 'transcend' experience, as 
Kant would say : He is the presupposition and possibility of 
all experience, and also its end and sum." 

The most important work of living writers belongs in 
most cases to the present century. Amongst them only one 
other will be mentioned here, because of the influence which he 
had upon philosophy even before the end of the Victorian era. 



James Ward 287 

The writings of James Ward, professor at Cambridge, 
are partly psychological, partly metaphysical. His article 
on " Psychology, " which was published in the ninth edition 
of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1886, exercised an influence 
upon psychological enquiry which is probably without prece- 
dent among writings which were not published indepen- 
dently. It marks a definite break with the traditional doc- 
trine of " present at ionism, " and it gives a new analysis and 
interpretation of the facts of association. Experience is no 
longer regarded as an automatic combination of data of 
sensation given in isolation, but as a continuum into which 
distinctions and connections are gradually introduced by the 
action of selective attention; the development of mind is 
shown to be ruled by subjective selection as well as by 
natural selection ; and all mental process to depend upon and 
imply a subjective reference. Two other articles on the 
same subject in later editions of the Encyclopaedia and many 
contributions to journals prepared the way for his classical 
treatment of Psychological Principles, published in 1918. 
In Naturalism and Agnosticism (1899) the two doctrines 
named are subjected to exhaustive and perhaps final criti- 
cism, a theory of scientific conceptions is worked out, and a 
constructive view of reality, idealistic or spiritual in charac- 
ter, is maintained. Founding on the implication of subject 
and object in all experience, the author reaches a metaphysi- 
cal position according to which the universe is throughout 
interpreted as spiritual ; and this spiritual nature is found in a 
plurality of finite conscious centres of experience. In a later 
work, The Realm of Ends, or Pluralism and Theism (191 1), 
he brings into prominence the conception of worth, and 
passes from a review of non-theistic pluralism to a discussion 
and defence of the theistic view of the world. The meta- 
physic worked out in these two books may be regarded as a 
return to monadism in contrast with the monism of Green. 
But the new monadism differs from that of Leibniz as much 
as Green's monism differs from the monism of Spinoza. It is 
in many respects more in harmony with the "spiritual 



288 The Victorian Era 

realism" of Berkeley. For its monads are regarded as in- 
fluencing one another and as working out their ends in inter- 
action both with one another and with an environment of 
laws and values which express the infinite mind. 

The reaction from idealism is most strikingly illustrated 
in the writings of Robert Adamson. The most learned of his 
contemporary philosophers, his earlier works were written 
from the standpoint of a neo-Hegelian idealism. These 
works are a small volume On the Philosophy of Kant (1879), 
a monograph on Fichte (1861), and an article on logic (1882), 
long afterwards (191 1) republished in book form. The fun- 
damental opposition of philosophical doctrines he regarded 
as "the opposition between Hegelianism on the one hand 
and scientific naturalism or realism on the other"; and he 
rejected the latter doctrine because its explanation of thought 
as the product of antecedent conditions was incompetent to 
explain thought as self -consciousness. The problem which 
he set himself was to re-think from the former point of view 
the new material concerning nature, mind, and history 
provided by modern science. He came gradually to the 
opinion that this could not be done — that idealism was in- 
adequate. His posthumously published lectures entitled 
The Development of Modern Philosophy (1903) show that he 
was engaged in working out a reconstruction from the point 
of view which he had at first held incompetent — that of 
realism. But his suggestions do not point to a theory of 
mechanism or materialism. Although mind has come into 
being, it is as essential as nature : both are partial manifesta- 
tions of reality. But he had not an opportunity fully to 
work out his constructive theory or to examine its adequacy 
and coherence. 

The new tendencies which distinguish more recent philo- 
sophy illustrate also the increasing reaction of the literature 
of the United States of America upon English thought. The 
theory known as pragmatism is definitely of trans-Atlantic 



Robert Adamson 289 

origin, and forms of what is called the new realism seem to 
have been started independently in the United States and in 
this country. The latter theory is largely a revival of older 
views: both the natural realism of Reid and the scholastic 
doctrine of the reality of universals appear to have contri- 
buted to its formation. Pragmatism is a more original 
doctrine ; but its seeds also lie in the past : it has been con- 
nected with the prevailingly practical tone of much English 
thought; and more definite anticipations of its leading idea 
might be found in some of the later English writers of the 
nineteenth century. 
19 



CHAPTER XIII 
Retrospect 

r[E preceding survey of English philosophy breaks off 
at a moment when the interest is at its height. Never- 
theless, the end of a century and the close of a long 
reign do also, in this case, mark a period in the history of 
thought. The leading schools, evolutionary and idealistic, 
had elaborated their views very fully; both had been sub- 
jected to thorough criticism; and interest was beginning to 
turn to new questions or new ways of putting old ones. The 
year 1900 is thus a convenient date for ending an historical 
record. Reviewing this record as a whole, it may be possible 
to make some general remarks on the features which charac- 
terise three centuries of English thought. 

English philosophy is one of the results of the awakening 
of the European mind known as the Renaissance. It had 
its roots in the older learning of the Scholastics; but its 
national character is seen clearly only after it began to be 
written in the English language. The intellectual ferment 
of the time, the wide sweep of its imagination, and its con- 
fidence in the future triumphs of mind were expressed by 
Bacon. Hobbes seized upon a leading conception of the new 
science, and by its aid constructed a system. Both made use 
of the ideas of their day, but in philosophy they were pioneers. 
After them English thought, like European thought gen- 
erally, came under the influence of Descartes. But, from 
this time onwards, until the influence of Kant and Hegel 

290 



Retrospect 291 

made itself felt in the nineteenth century, English philosophy 
pursued an independent course. Spinoza was little known 
and avoided — possibly for theological reasons. Leibniz was 
equally neglected — perhaps, in some measure, owing to the 
controversy with Newton. No doubt the disregard of these 
great thinkers entailed some loss; but it gave free course to 
original developments, and it did not prevent a powerful 
reaction of English upon continental philosophy. In France, 
Condillac and Helvetius drew their ideas from Locke; his 
influence and that of his followers among the deists were 
prominent in the period of the "Enlightenment" in France 
and Germany ; and one side of his work culminated in Hume 
and stimulated Kant to a new criticism of knowledge. After 
Kant, and in the brilliant period of German speculation 
which followed, English influence diminished. The Scottish 
philosophy, it is true, had its echo in France ; and, later in the 
nineteenth century, the empirical logic of John Stuart Mill 
and the ideas of Darwin, which Spencer worked into a system, 
left their mark upon philosophy throughout the world. But 
on the whole, philosophy in Great Britain not only lost its 
influence abroad but at home also began to pay the penalty 
for its independence. For a vigorous life the influence of 
new ideas from other strains of thought was needed; and 
these new ideas came from many quarters, but chiefly from 
the group of thinkers of whom Hegel was the greatest. 

Before this influence made itself felt — especially in the 
earlier decades of the last century — English philosophy had 
suffered a decline : it was written in the minor key ; the more 
speculative topics were avoided; and great figures were 
scarce. There was never any real gap in the development, 
any time at which thought was dead. But for the time it 
dwindled, whereas other periods, before and since, were 
marked by greater intensity, wider interests, and more 
influential thinkers. In the three centuries under review 
perhaps no other country can show more names of the first 
rank in philosophy and of greater permanent influence upon 
the course of human thought. 



292 Retrospect 

The English philosophers were not great system-builders^ 
Between Hobbes and Herbert Spencer there was no impor- 
tant writer who attempted a complete survey of the whole 
realm of thought from his point of view and articulated it 
into a system. The importance of philosophical ideas cannot 
be estimated rightly by their expression as a compact body 
of doctrine. Indeed there is a danger in the premature re- 
duction of ideas to system. We need not say with Nietzsche 
that "the will to system is a lack of rectitude"; but the 
system-builder in philosophy has many temptations to stray 
from the path of strict intellectual honesty. Historians of 
philosophy also are apt to be unjust when they force the 
ideas of others into system and describe them by some 
general term. English writers — Locke in particular — have 
suffered much in this way at the hands of erudite German 
historians on the look-out for system rather than for thought ; 
and Kuno Fischer has even described English philosophy as 
a whole as a stage in the development of realism or empiri- 
cism. It is unnecessary to discuss such a view, for it does not 
admit of defence and hardly of excuse. English philosophy 
produces a very different impression when its documents 
are read at first hand and without theoretical preconcep- 
tions. It is true that the problems and the issue of a particu- 
lar type of thought may be traced, better than anywhere else, 
in the works of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, John Stuart Mill, and 
Spencer. But even their message is not exhausted by the 
term "empiricism"; there is as good reason, for instance, to 
describe Locke as the first "critical" philosopher as to call 
him the apostle of empiricism. Besides, there were never 
wanting representatives of a different outlook. Berkeley is 
improperly regarded as a thinker half-way between Locke 
and Hume; and the idealistic tradition was maintained 
throughout the centuries by Herbert of Cherbury, More, 
Cudworth, Norris, Shaftesbury, Reid, and many others — 
thinkers who fell short of the first rank but bear witness to 
the speculative insight of the English mind. 

Comprehensiveness rather than system marked the atti- 



Retrospect 293 

tude. Most of the greater writers are characterised by the 
width of their interests ; and they did not take a narrow, or 
rigidly professional, view of the boundaries of philosophy. 
In this matter, as in so many others, Locke is representative 
of the national tradition. He dealt with questions of theology, 
of politics, of economics, and of education, as well as with the 
fundamental problems of knowledge. He had no ambition 
to bring these writings together into a compact whole; and, 
unless in the eyes of some academic student, his work has 
not suffered. The lack of system has even given freer play 
to his ideas and encouraged freer criticism of them. Yet his 
individual point of view may be seen in all that he wrote. 
He had a clue and he followed it wherever it promised to lead 
to discovery. It was the same with others. There is no 
national philosophy which is less a concern of the school 
than the English. Many of its great writers have been men 
of leisure or men of affairs, who were not occupied with 
philosophy professionally but were attracted by the perennial 
interest of its problems. They did not easily unite into 
schools of thought ; they were too careless sometimes of logi- 
cal technique; each was apt to look from his own angle of 
vision ; but all were intent upon arriving at some understand- 
ing of the position of the individual self in the universe. 
These are features in that "individual character" which 
marks English philosophy and which — to quote a recent 
judgment 1 — "entitles it to rank as one of the most impor- 
tant phases in the history of human thought." 
1 J. T. Merz, A Fragment on the Human Mind (1919), p. I. 



COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 

giving the dates of the chief works in English philosophy along with the dates 
of some other writings, English and foreign, and of some leading events. 



296 



Comparative Chronological Table 



English Philosophy 



1605 Bacon, Advancement of Learning 



English literature and science 

Bacon, Essays. 1597 

Gilbert, De magnete. 1600 

Shakespeare, Hamlet. 1602. 
Florio, transl. of Montaigne. 1603 
Ben Jonson, Volpone. 1605 

Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster. 1608 

Donne, Anatomy of the World. 1610 
"Authorised" transl. of the Bible. 161 1 

Ralegh, History of the World. 16 14 



1620 Bacon, Novum organum 



1623 Bacon, De augmentis 

1624 Herbert, De veritate 



1640 Hobbes, Elements of Law (circu- 



lated in manuscript) 

of Truth 



1641 Brooke, Nature 

1642 Hobbes, De cive 



Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy. 162 1 
Shakespeare, first folio. 1623 



Harvey, De motu cordis et sanguinis. 1628 
George Herbert, The Temple. 1633 
Milton, Comus. 1637 (written 1634) 

Sir T. Browne, Religio medici. 1642 



J. Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying. 1647 



165 1 Hobbe., Leviathan 

1652 Culverwel, Light of Nature 

1653 More, Antidote against Atheism 

1659 More, Immortality of the Soul 

1660 Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium 
Sanderson, De obligatione con- 

scientiae 

1661 Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatizing 

1662 More, Philosophical Writings 



Harrington, Oceana. 1656 



Butler, Hudibras. 1662-78 



1666 More, Enchiridion ethicum 



Milton, Paradise Lost. 1667 



167 1 M ore, Enchiridion metaphysicum 



1678 Cudworth, True Intellectual System Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress. 1678 
Burthogge, Organum vetus et novum 

Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel. 168 1 



Comparative Chronological Table 



297 



Foreign philosophy, literature, and science 



Events 



Mariana, De rege. 1599 



Althusius, Politica. 1603 

Cervantes, Don Quixote, part i. 1605 



Kepler, Astronomia nova. 1609 



English East India Co. founded. 1600 
Bruno burned at Rome. 1600 

Union of English and Scottish crowns. 1603 

Plantation of Virginia. 1607 

Plantation of Ulster. 1609 



Bohme, Aurora. 1612 



Suarez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore. 1617 

Kepler, Harmonia mundi. 16 19 
Campanella, De sensu rerum. 1620 



Deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes. 16 16 

Thirty Years' War begun. 1618 

The " Mayflower" takes English emigrants 
from Leyden to America. 1620 



Grotius, De jure belli et pacis. 162s 

Galileo, Dialogo dei due massimi sistemi del 
mondo. 1632 



Corneille, Le cid. 1636 

Descartes, Discours de la m^thode. 1637 



Descartes, Meditationes. 1641-2 
Descartes, Principia philosophiae. 1644 

Escobar, Theologia moralis. 1646 

Descartes, Les passions de l'ame. 1650 



Petition of Right. 1628 



Laud archbp. of Canterbury. 1633 
French Academy founded. 1635 



Scottish National Covenant. 1638 

English Civil War begins. 1642 
Westminster Assembly of Divines. 1643 

Execution of Laud. 1645 
Origin of the Society, afterwards (1662) the 
Royal Society. 1645 



Treaty of Westphalia. 1648 
Execution of Charles I. 1649 



Pascal, Lettres h. un provincial. 1656 
Moliere, Les pr6cieuses ridicules. 1659 



Cromwell Lord Protector. 1653 
Vaudois Persecution. 1656 

Restoration of the Stuarts. 1660 



Arnauld and Nicole, L'art de penser. 

Geulincx, Logica. 1662 

Leibniz, De principio individui. 1663 



1662 



Act of Uniformity. 1662 



La Rochefoucauld, Maximes. 1665 
Journai des savants (begun). 1665 

Racine, Andromache. 1667 

Bossuet. Oraisons funebres. 1660-87 

Pascal, PensSes. 1670 

Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus. 

1670 
Boileau, L'art po6tique. 1674 
Malebranche, Recherche de la v6rit6. 1674 
Geulincx, Ethica. 1675 
Spinoza, Ethica. 1677 
Racine, Phedre. 1677 



Great Plague. 1665 

Great Fire in London. 1666 

Acquisition of Bombay. 1668 



Borelli, De motu animalium. 1680-8 1 



298 



Comparative Chronological Table 



English philosophy 



English literature and science 
Petty, Political Arithmetic. 1682 
Newton, Principia. 1687 



T689 Locke, Epistola de tolerantia 

1690 Locke, Treatises of Government 

Locke, Essay concerning Human 
Understanding 

1694 Burthogge, Reason and the Nature 

of Spirits 

1695 Locke, Reasonableness of Christi- 

anity 

1696 Toland, Christianity not mysterious 
Sergeant, Method to Science 

1697 Sergeant, Solid Philosophy 



: 701-4 N orris, Ideal or Intelligible World 



:70s Clarke, Being and Attributes of God 



Newton, Optics. 1704 

Clarendon, History of the Rebellion (written 
1646-48, 1668-70). 1704 



1709 Berkeley, New Theory of Vision 

1710 Berkeley, Principles of Human Know- 

ledge 

17 1 1 Shaftesbury, Characteristics 



Pope, Essay on Criticism. 17 1: 
Addison, Spectator. 1711-14 



17 13 Berkeley, Hylasand Philonous 
Collier, Clavis universalis 
Collins, Discourse of Free-thinking 



1722 Wollaston, Religion of Nature 



172s Hutcheson, Inquiry into Beauty and 

Virtue 
1726 Butler, Sermons 

1730 Tindal, Christianity as old as the 

Creation 

1731 Cudworth, Eternal and Immutable 

Morality 

1732 Berkeley, Alciphron 



Defoe, Robinson Crusoe. 17 19 



Burnet, History of my own time. 1724 



Swift, Gulliver's Travels. 1726 
Law, A Serious Call. 1729 



Pope, Essay on Man. 1732 



1736 Butler, Analogy 

1739 Hume, Human Nature 

1 74 1-2 Hume, Essays moral and political 



Bolingbroke, A Patriot King. 1738 
Fielding, Joseph Andrews. 1742 



[744 Berkeley, Siris 



1748 Hume, Philosophical Essays (after- 

wards entitled Enquiry) concern- 
ing Human Understanding 

1749 Hartley, Observations on Man 



Richardson, Clarissa Harlowe. 1748 
Fielding, Tom Jones. 1749 



Comparative Chronological Table 



299 



Foreign philosophy, literature, and science 
Acta eruditorum (begun). 1682 



La Bruyere, Les Caracteres. 1688-94 

Perrault, Parallele des anciens et des mod- 
ernes. 1688 

Malebranche, Entretiens sur la m6ta- 
physique. 1688. 

Malpighi, De structura glandularum. 1689 



Events 

Accession of Peter the Great. 1682 
Edict of Nantes (1598) revoked. 1685 



English Revolution. 1688 



Toleration Act. 
Bill of Rights. 



1689 
[689 



Leibniz, Systeme nouveau de la nature. 
169S 



Bank of England founded. 1694 
Freedom of the English Press. 1695 



Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique. 
1697 



Treaty of Ryswick. 1697 

Berlin Academy of Sciences (with Leibniz as 

president) founded. 1700 
English Act of Settlement. 1701 
First daily newspaper in England. 1702 
Battle of Blenheim. 1704 



Muratori, Delia perfetta poesia. 1705-6 
Vauban, Dime royale. 1707 



Leibniz, Th6odic6e. 1710 



Union of English and Scottish Parliaments. 

1707 
Battle of Pultowa. 1709 



Wolf, Vernunftige Gedanken von den Kraf- 
ten des menschlichen Verstandes. 17 12 



Treaty of Utrecht. 17 13 



Leibniz, Monadologie. 1714 

Fenelon, Trait6 de l'existence de Dieu. 

1715 
Wolf. Ver. Ged. von Gott, Welt und Seele. 

1719 

Voltaire, Henriade. 1723 
Vico, Scienza nuova. 1725 



Accession of George I. 17 14 
Death of Louis XIV. 1715 



Voltaire in England. 1726-9 



Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais. 1734 
Linneaus, Systema naturae. 1735 



Repeal of English statutes against witch- 
craft. 1736 



Brucker, Historia philosophiae. 1741 

D'Alembert, Dynamique. 1743 

Lamettrie, Histoire naturelle de l'ame. 1745 
Vauvenargues, Maximes et pensees. 1746 
Condillac, Origines des connaissances hu- 

maines. 1746 
Diderot, Pensees philosophiques. 1746 
Montesquieu, Esprit des lois. 1748 
Lamettrie, L'homme machine. 1748 

Buffon, Histoire naturelle. 1749 



Accession of Frederick the Great. 
Fall of Walpole. 1742 
First Methodist conference. 1744 
Battle of Culloden. 1746 

Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. 1748 



300 



Comparative Chronological Table 



English philosophy 



175 1 Hume, Enquiry concerning the Prin- 
ciples of Morals 



English literature and science 
Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes. 1749 



Hume, History of England, vol. i., 1754 



1755 Hutcheson, System of Moral Philo- Johnson, Dictionary. 1755 
sophy 

Burke, Sublime and Beautiful. 1756 
1757 Price, Principal Questions in Morals 



1759 Adam Smith, Moral Sentiments Goldsmith, Citizen of the World. 1759 

Johnson, Rasselas. 1759 
Sterne, Tristram Shandy. 1760 
Macpherson, Ossian. 1760 
Wallace, Prospects of Mankind. 1761 
Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism. 1762 

1764 Reid, Inquiry into the Human Mind Goldsmith, Traveller. 1764 



Blackstpne, Commentaries. 1765 

Percy, Reliques. 1765 

Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield. 1766 



1768 Priestley, First Principles of Govern- 
ment 
1768-78 Tucker, Light of Nature 



Ferguson, Essay on Civil Society. 1767 



Letters of Junius. 1769 

Goldsmith, Deserted Village. 1770 
Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discon- 
tents. 1770 



1776 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations 
Price, Nature of Civil Liberty 
Bentham, Fragment on Government 

1777 Priestley, Disquisition on Matter and 
Spirit 



Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. i. 1776 



Johnson, Lives of the Poets. 1779 
Cooper and Newton. Olney Hymns. 1779 



1785 Paley, Moral Philosophy 

Reid, Essays on %he Intellectual 
Powers 



Burns, Poems. 1786 



1788 Reid, Essays on the Active Powers 



1789 Bentham, Principles of Morals and 
Legislation 



Blake, Songs of Innocence. r789 

White, Natural History of Selborne. 1789 

Burke, Reflections on the Revolution. 1789 



1792 Dugald Stewart, Philosophy of the 
Human Mind, vol. i 



Boswell, Life ofi Johnson. 1791 
Mackintosh, Vindiciae Gallicae. 1791 
T. Paine, Rights of Man. 1791 
M. Wolstonecraft, Rights of Women. 1 

Godwin, Political Justice. 1793 



t792 



Comparative Chronological Table 



301 



Foreign philosophy, literature, and science 



Events 



Baumgarten, Aesthetica. 1750 

Diderot and D'Alembert, Encyclop6die, 

vols, i, ii. 1751 
S. Johnson (America). Elementa philo- 

sophica. 1752 
J. Edwards (America), Freedom of the Will. 

1754 
Condillac, Trait6 des sensations. 1754 
Rousseau, Sur l'origine de l'in6galite\ 1755 
Kant, Allgemeine hiaturgeschichte. 1755 

Haller, Elementa physiologiae. 1757-60 
Boscovitch, Philosophia naturalis. 1758 
Helv6tius, De l'esprit. 1758 
Quesnay, Tableau economique. 1758 
Voltaire, Candide. I7S9 

Rousseau, La nouvelle H61oise. 1760. 
Contrat social. 1762. Emile. 1764 



Seven Years' War be,gun. 1756 
Battle of Plassey. 1757 



Accession of George III. 1760 



Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique. 1764 
Beccaria, Dei delitti e delle pene. 1764 



First proceedings against Wilkes. 1763 



Lessing, Laocoon. 1766 
Turgot, Reflexions sur la formation et la 
distribution des richesses. 1766 



Holbach, Systeme de la nature. 1770 
Kant, De mundi forma et principiis. 1770 

Goethe, Leiden des jungen Werthers. 1774 
Lessing, Wolfenbutterler Fragmente (of 

Reimarus). 1774-8 
Kant, Anthropologic 177s 



First partition of Poland. 1772 



American Declaration of Independence. 

1776 
Death of Hume. 1776 



Lessing, Erziehung d. mensch. Geschlechts. 

1780 
Schiller, Die Rauber. 1781 
Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 1781 
Herder, Ideen zu Philosophic de Ge- 

schichte. 1784-91 
Jacobi, Briefe uber Spinoza. 1785 



Lagrange, Mecaniqueanalytique. 1788 
Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. 

1788 
Marten, Pr6cis du droit des gens moderne. 

1789 
Lavoisier.. Trait6 6l6mentaire de chimie. 

1789 
Alfieri, Tragedie. 1789 
Kant. Kritik der Urtheilskraft. 1790 



Federal Constitution of U. S. A. framed. 
1787 



French Revolution. 1789 



Fichte, Kritik aller Offenbarung. 1792 
Schulze, Aenesidemus. 1792 
Condorcet. E^quisse d'un tableau historique. 
1793 



French Convention establishes a republic. 

1792 
Second partition of Poland. 1793 



302 



Comparative Chronological Table 



English philosophy 



English literature and science 

T. Paine, Age of Reason. 1794 
E. Darwin, Zoonomia. 1794 
Hutton, Theory of the Earth. 1795 



[798 Malthus, Essay on Population 



W. Wilberforce, A Practical View. 1797 
The Anti- Jacobin. 1797 
Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Bal- 
lads. 1798 



1802 Paley, Natural Theology 



Edinburgh Review (begun). 1802 



1 805 T. Brown, Relation of Cause and 
Effect 



Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel. 1805 
Colebrooke, Essay on the Vedas. 1805 



Lamb, Specimens of the English Drama- 
tists. 1808 

Dalton, New System of Chemical Philo- 
sophy. 1808-27 

Byron, English Bards and Scotch Re- 
viewers. 1809 

Coleridge, The Friend. 1809 



Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare. 
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility. 



1811 
1811 



Owen, New View of Human Society. 
Walter Scott, Waverley. 1814 



1813 



18 1 7 Coleridge, Biographia literaria 



1820 T. Brown, Lectures 



Ricardo, Pol. Econ. and Taxation. 1817 

Shelley, Revolt of Islam. 18 18 

Keats, Endymion. 18 18 

Hallam, History of the Middle Ages. 18 18 

James Mill, History of British India. 1818 

Byron, Don Juan. 1819 



Chalmers, Christian and Civic Economy of 
Large Towns. 182 1-6 



Comparative Chronological Table 



303 



Foreign philosophy, literature, and science 
Fichte, Wissenschaftslehre. 1794 
Wolf, Prolegomena ad Homerum. 1795 

Laplace, Systeme du monde. 1796 



Events 



Institute of France (in place of the academ- 
ies, abolished in 1793) founded. 1795 
Third partition of Poland. 1795 



Schleiermacher, Reden uber die Religion. 

1799 
Laplace, M6canique celeste. 1799-1825 
Herder, Metakritik. 1799 
Schelling, System des transcendentalen 

Idealismus. 1800 
Mme de Stael, De la literature. 1800 
Gauss, Disquisitiones arithmeticae. 1801 



G6nie du christianisme. 
Krit. Journal d. 



Chateaubriand, 

1802 
Schelling and Hegel. 

Phil. 1802 
Maine de Biran, Memoires sur l'habitude. 

1803 
Schleiermacher, Kritjk der bisherigen Sitten- 

lehre. 1803 
Senancour, Obermann. 1804 
Jean Paul Richter, Flegeljahre. 1804-05 
Destutt de Tracy, El6mens d'ideologie. 

1804 
Krause, Entwurf des Systems d. Phil. 1804 



Herbart, Hauptpunkte der Metaphysik. 
1806 

Fries, Neue Kritik der Vernunft. 1807 
Hegel, Phanomenologie des Geistes. 1807 
Goethe, Faust, part i. 1808 



Battle of the Nile. 1798 

Napoleon Bonaparte first consul. 1799 



Union of parliaments of Great Britain and 
Ireland. 1800 

First English census. 1801 

C. M.S. established. 1801 

First English Factory Act. 1802 



Napoleon emperor. 1804 
French Code civil. 1804 



Battle of Trafalgar. 1805 

Battle of Austerlitz. 1805 

Battle of Jena. 1806 

Holy Roman Empire formally terminated. 

1806 
Act abolishing slavery in British dominions. 

1807 
Peninsula War. 1808-13 



Oken, Naturphilosophie. 1809 



Berlin University founded. 1810 



Cabanis, Rapports du physique et du moral. 

1812 
Niebuhr, Romische Geschichte. 1812 
Hegel, Wissenschaf t der Logik. 1 8 1 2 

Savigny, Vom Beruf unserer Zeit fur Ge- 

setzgebung. 18 14 
Lamarck, Histoire naturelle des animaux 

sans vertebres. 18 15 

Cuvier, Regne animal. 18 17 



Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow. 181a 

Battle of Leipzig. 18 13 
Abdication of Napoleon. 1814 

Battle of Waterloo. 18 15 

French Academy revived. 1816 



Schopenhaur, Welt als Wille und Vorstel- 

lung. 1 8 19 
Lamartine, Meditations poetiques. 1820 
De Maistre, Soirees de St. Petersbourg. 

1821 
Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube. 

1821-22 
Hegel, Philosophic des Rechts. 1821 
Heine, Gedichte. 1821 
Baader, Fermenta cognitionis. 1822 
Herbart, Psychologie als Wissenschaft. 

1824 
Leopardi, Canzoni. 1824 
Manzoni, I promessi sposi. 1827 



304 



Comparative Chronological Table 



English philosophy 



1820 James Mill, Analysis of the Pheno- 
mena of the Human Mind 
Hamilton, Philosophy of the Uncon- 
ditioned (article) 



English literature and science 
Combe, Constitution of Man. 1828 



Lyell, Principles of Geology, 1830-32 



1832 Austin, Province of Jurisprudence Tennyson, Poems. 1832 
determined 

Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (in Fraser's Mag.). 
1833 



Browning, Paracelsus. 1835 



1838 J. S. Mill, Bentham (article) 



Dickens, Pickwick. 1836 



1840 J. S. Mill, Coleridge (article) 

Whewell, Philosophy of the Induc- 
tive Sciences 



Newman, Tract No. XC. 1841 



1843 J. S. Mill, System of Logic 



Joule, Mechanical Value of Heat (paper 

at Brit. Ass.). 1843 
Faraday, Experimental Researches in 

Electricity. 1844-55 
W. G. Ward, Ideal of a Christian Church. 

1844 



1846 Hamilton, ed. of Reid 

1847 De Morgan, Formal Logic 



J. H. Newman, Essay on the Development 

of Christian Doctrine. 1846 
Grote, History of Greece. 1846-56 



Thackeray, Vanity Fair. 1848 

J. S. Mill, Political Economy. 1848 

Macaulay, History of England. 1848-50 



1850 Spencer, Social Statics 

185 1 Mansel, Prolegomena logica 

1853 H. Martineau, transl. of Comte 

1854 Ferrier, Institutes of Metaphysic 
Boole, Laws of Thought 

1855 Bain, The Senses and the Intellect 
Spencer, Principles of Psychology 



Tennyson, In Memoriam. 
Ruskin, Stones of Venice. 



1850 
1851 



George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life. 1857 
Buckle, History of Civilisation. 1857 



Comparative Chronological Table 



305 



Foreign philosophy, literature, and science 

Cousin, Introduction a l'hist. de la phil. 
1828 



Events 



Catholic Emancipation Act. 1820 



Victor Hugo, Hernani. 1830 
Rosmini, Sull'origine delle idee. 1830 
Comte, Philosophie positive. 1830-43 
Victor Hugo, Notre Dame. 183 1 
Goethe, Faust, part ii. 1832 
Hegel, Religionsphilosophie. 1832 
Jouflroy, M61anges philosophiques. 1833 
Joh. Muller, Handbuch der Physiologic 

1833-40 
Saint-Simon, Reorganisation de la soci6t6 

europeenne. 1834 
Balzac, Pere Goriot. 1834 
Maine de Biran, Rapports du physique et 

du moral. 1834 
Lamennais, Paroles d'un croyant. 1834 
De Tocqueville, D6mocratie en Am6rique. 

183S 
Quetelet, La physique sociale. 1835 
Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie. 1835 
Strauss, Leben Jesu. 1835 
De Musset, Confession d'un enfant du 

siecle. 1836 

Cournot, Recherches sur les principes 

math6matiques de la theorie des richesses. 

1838 
Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen. 

1840 
Proudhon, Qu'est-ce que la propri6t6. 1840 
Lamennais, Esquisse d'une philosophie. 

1841-46 
Vatke, Die menschliche Freiheit. 1841 
Feuerbach, Wesen des Christenthums. 1841 
List, Das nationale System der politischen 

Okonomie. 1841 
Emerson, Essays (first series). 1841 
George Sand, Consuelo. 1842-44 



"Young Italy" founded by Mazzini. 
English Reform Act. 1832 



1831 



French Academy of moral and political 
sciences revived. 1833 

New English Poor Law. 1834 



Accession of Victoria. 1837 
Chartist movement begun. 1838 



Stirner [C. Schmidt], 
Eigenthum. 1844 



Der Einzige und sein 



Rothe, Theologische Ethik. 1845 
A. v. Humbolt, Kosmos. 1845 



Abolition of duty on Corn in England. 1846 



Helmholtz, Erhaltung der Kraft. 1847 



Communist manifesto by Marx and Engels. 
1847 



Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi (begun). 
1849 



Turgueniev, Papers of a Sportsman. 1852 
Leconte de Lisle, Poemes antiques. 1853 
Renouvier, Essais de critique g6nerale. 

1854-64 
Fischer, Geschichte der Philosophie. 1854 
Buchner. Kraft und Stoff. 185s 



Victor Hugo, Les Contemplations. 
Lotze, Mikrokosmus. 1856-64 
Flaubert, Madame Bovary. 1857 
Baudelaire, Fleurs du mal. 1857 
Taine, Philosophes francais. 1857 



1856 



Second French Republic; revolutions and 
insurrections in Italy, Germany, Austria, 
Bohemia, Poland. 1848 



Fugitive Slave Law, U. S. A. 1850 
Coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon. 185] 

Gladstone's first Budget. 1853 
Crimean War. 1854-56 



Indian Mutiny. 1857-58 



306 



Comparative Chronological Table 



English Philosophy 



English literature and science 



1858 Mansel, Limits of Religious Thought 
1858-60 Hamilton, Lectures 



Meredith, Ordeal of Richard Feverel. 1858 
FitzGerald, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. 

1858 
Darwin, Origin of Species. 1859 



1862 Spencer, First Principles 

1863 J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism 



1865 J. S. Mill, on Hamilton 

J. Grote, Exploratio philosophica, 

part i 
Hodgson, Time and Space 
Stirling, Secret of Hegel 



Essays and Reviews, i860 
Maine, Ancient Law. 1861 



Lyell, Antiquity of Man. 1863 
Huxley, Man's Place in Nature. 1863 
J. H. Newman, Apologia. 1864 
Seeley, Ecce homo. 186.5 
M. Arnold, Essays in Criticism. 1865 
Lubbock, Pre-historic Times. 1865 
Tylor, Early History of Mankind. 1865 
McLennan, Primitive Marriage. 1865 



1869 Barratt, Physical Ethics 

1870 J. Grote, Examination of the Utili- 

tarian Philosophy 
J. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent 

1 87 1 Fraser, ed. of Berkeley 



1872 Maurice, Moral and Metaphysical 

Philosophy 

1873 J. F. Stephen, Liberty. Equality, 

Fraternity 

1874 Jevons, Principles of Science 
Lewes, Problems, vol. i 
Green, Introductions to Hume 
Wallace, Logic of Hegel 
Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics 
Flint, Philosophy of History 

1876 Bradley, Ethical Studies 

L. Stephen, English Thought in the 

Eighteenth Century 
J. Grote, Moral Ideals 



Thomson and Tait, Natural Philosophy. 

1867 
Bagehot, English Constitution. 1867 

Browning, Ring and the Book. 1868-69 

Bagehot, Physics and Politics. 1869 

Galton, Hereditary Genius. 1870 
Crookes, Spiritualism and Science. 1870 



Theory of Political Economy. 
1872 



Jevons 
1871 
Darwin, Descent of Man. 187 1 
M. Arnold, Literature and Dogm 



Clerk Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism. 

1873 
Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd. 

1874 



[877 E. Caird, Critical Account of 
Philosophy of Kant 
Flint, Theism 



the G. Allen, Physiological Aesthetics. 1877 



1879 Spencer, Data of Ethics 

Adamson, On the Philosophy of Kant 
Balfour, Defence of Philosophic Doubt 



1880 J. Caird, Philosophy of Religion 

1 88 1 Venn, Symbolic Logic 

1882 L. Stephen, Science of Ethics 

1883 Barratfc, Physical Metempiric 
Green, Prolegomena to Ethics 
Bradley, Principles of Logic 



Seeley, Natural Religion. 1882 

Seebohm, English Village Community. 

1883 
Sidgwick, Political Economy. 1883 
Seeley, Expansion of England, 1883 



Comparative Chronological Table 



307 



Foreign philosophy, literature, and science 

Renan, Etudes d'histoire religieuse. 1857 
Vacherot, La m6taphysique et la science. 
1858 

Lazarus and Steinthal, Zeitschrift fur V61- 
kerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft 
(begun). 1859 

Fechner, Elem. d. Psychophysik. i860 

Tolstoy, War and Peace, i860 



Victor Hugo. Les Mis6rables. 1862 
Renan, Vie de J6sus. 1863 

Fustel de Coulanges, La cite" antique. 1864 



Events 



War of Italy and France against Austria. 
I8S9 



Victor Emanuel King of Italy. 186 1 
American Civil War. 1861-65 



Pasteur, Etudes sur le vin. 1866 

Ibsen, Brand. 1866 

Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. 1866 

Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus. 1866 

Karl Marx. Das Kapital. 1867 

W. T. Harris, Journal of Speculative Phil- 
osophy (St. Louis, U.S.A., begun). 1867 

Helmholtz, Physiologische Optik. 1867 

Haeckel, Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte. 
1868 

Hartmann, Philosophic des Unbewussten. 
1869 

Taine, Th6orie de l'intelligence. 1870 

Ritschl, Lehre von der Rechtfertigung. 
1870-74 



Janet, Problemes du xix e siecle. 1872 
Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube. 

1872 
Sigwart, Logik. 1873-78 

Wundt, Physiologische Psychologic 1874 
Boutroux, Contingence des lois de la nature. 

1874 
Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen 

Standpunkte. 1874 
Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy. 1874 

Renan, Dialogues et fragments philosophi- 

ques. 1876 
Riehl, Der philosophische Kriticismus. 

1876-87 
Tiele, Geschiedenis van den Godsdienst. 

1876 
Lombroso, L'uomo delinquente. 1876 
Carducci, Le odi barbare. 1877 



Atlantic cable laid. 1866 
Battle of Koniggratz. 1866 



English Reform Act. 1867 
North German Confederation. 



1867 



Suez Canal opened. 1869 

Irish Church disestablished. 1869 

English Education Act. 1870 

Papal Infallibility decreed. 1870 

Battle of Sedan. 1870 

German Empire proclaimed. 187 1 

Third French Republic. 1871 

Political Reformation in Japan. 187 1 



Ethical Societies founded in America. 1875 



Russo-Turkish War. 1877-78 



Strindberg, Master Oluf. 1878 

Nietzsche, Menschliches, allzumenschliches. 

1878-90 
Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Aeterni Patris. 

1879 
Zola. L'assommoir. 1879 
Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte, vol. i. 

1879 

Henry George, Progress and Poverty. 188 1 
Ribot, L'h6r6dit6 psychologique. 1882 
Bourget, Essais de psychologie contempo- 

raine. 1883 
Lester Ward, Dynamic Sociology. 1883 
Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissen- 

schaften. 1883-89 



Triple Alliance. 1882 



308 



Comparative Chronological Table 



English philosophy 



English literature and science 



:88s J. Martineau, Types of Ethical Pater, Marius the Epicurean. 1885 
Theory 



1886 J. Ward, Psychology (article) 



Dicey, Law of the Constitution. 1886 



1887 Seth (Pringle Pattison), Hegelian- J. C. Morison, Service of Man. 1887 

ism and Personality 

1888 J. Martineau, Study of Religion 
Bosanquet, Logic 



1889 E. Caird, Critical Philosophy of Kant 
1889 Alexander, Moral Order and Progress 



Bryce, American Commonwealth. 1889 



Marshall, Principles of Economics. 1890 
Frazer, The Golden Bough. 1890 



1891 Sidgwick, Elements of Politics 
Schiller. Riddles of the Sphinx 



1893 Bradley, Appearance and Reality 
E. Caird, Evolution of Religion 
Huxley, Ethics and Evolution 



1895 Balfour, Foundations of Belief 
Fraser, Philosophy of Theism 

1896 Stout, Analytic Psychology 
McTaggart, Studies in the Hegelian 

Dialectic 
Hobhouse, Theory of Knowledge 
1896-1914 Merz, History of European 
Thought in the nineteenth century 



1898 Hodgson, Metaphysic of Experience 
Wallace, Natural Theology and Ethics 

1899 J. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism 
Bosanquet, Philosophical Theory of 

the State 



Westermarck, History of Marriage. 1891 

C. Booth, Life and Labour of the People 

in London. 1892-97 
Pearson, National Life and Character. 1893 



Webb, History of Trade Unionism. 1894 

Kidd, Social Evolution. 1894 

Pollock and Maitland, History of English 

Law. 1894 
Seeley, Growth of British Policy. 1895 
Hardy, Jude the Obscure. 1895 
Lecky, Democracy and Liberty. 1896 



Crozier, History of Intellectual Develop- 
ment. 1897 
Webb, Industrial Democracy. 1897 
Bodley, France. 1898 



Comparative Chronological Table 



309 



Foreign philosophy, literature, and science 

Nietzsche, AlsosprachZarathustra. 1883-91 

Jung Deutschland (poems). 1885 

Royce, Religious Aspect of Philosophy. 

1885 
Lachelier. Psychologie et M6taphysique 

(article). 1885 
Ardigo, La morale dei positivisti. 1885 
Guyau, Esquisse d'une morale. 1885 
Mach, Beitrage zur Analyse der Empfin- 

dungen. 1886 
Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Bose. 

1886 
Sudermann, Frau Sorge. 1886 



Events 



New Franchise Act in Great Britain. 1884 



Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill. 1886 



Anatole France, La vie litt6raire. 1888 
Avenarius, Kritik der reinen Erfahrung. 

1888-90 
Bergson, Donn6es imm6diates de la con- 
science. 1889. 
Wundt, System der Philosophic 1889 
Tarde, Lois de l'imitation. 1890 
W. James, Principles of Psychology. 1890 
Brunetiere, L 'Evolution des genres, vol. i. 

1890 
Bohm-Bawerk, Positive Theorie des Kapi- 

tals. 1891 
Simmel, Moralwissenschaft. 1892 

Sardou, Madame Sans-G6ne. 1893 
Fouillee, Psychologie des idees-forces. 1893 
Durkheim, Division du travail social. 1893 
Giddings, Principles of Sociology. 1893 
Meinong, Psy.-eth. Unters. aur Werth- 
theorie. 1894 



Fall of Bismarck. 1890 



Bergson, Matiere et memoire. 1896 



Rontgen's discovery of X-rays. 1895 



Sabatier, Philosophie de la religion. 1897 
W. James, The Will to Believe. 1897 
Ehrenfels. System der Werttheorie. 1897-8 



Meinong, Ueber Gegenstande hoherer Ord- 
nung (article). 1899 

Royce, The World and the Individual. 1900 



The Tsar's Peace Rescript. 1898 
Spanish-American War. 1898 
First Hague Conference. 1899 
South African War. 1899-1902 



Death of Queen Victoria. 190 1 



In the following bibliography the names of writers are arranged chronologically, the date of 
each writer being determined by the date of publication of the earliest work whose title 
appears in the list. The list does not profess to be exhaustive. It does not include medieval 
writers; it has been found necessary to apply a more rigorous principle of selection as recent 
times are approached; articles in journals are omitted; and writers whose important works 
are subsequent to 1900 are not mentioned. Following upon the list of his books, in certain 
cases references are given to critical estimates of the writer's work. 

The views of the more important writers mentioned are summarised or discussed in the 
leading histories of modern philosophy. There are also two books which deal with English 
philosophy as a whole: J. Seth's English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy, 1912; and 
T. M. Forsyth's English Philosophy, 1910. 

The following deal with periods in the history of English philosophy: C. de Re'musat, 
Histoire de la philosophic en Angleterre depuis Bacon jusqu'a Locke, 1875; J. Tulloch, Ra- 
tional Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, 2d ed., 
1874; J. Leland, View of the Principal Deistical Writers, 1754-6; G. V. Lechler, Geschichte 
des englischen Deismus, 1841; A. S. Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought, 1862; J. Hunt, 
Religious Thought in England, 1870-2; L. Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth 
Century, 1876; G. Lyon, L'idealisme en Angleterre au xviii e siecle, 1888; J. McCosh, The 
Scottish Philosophy, 1875; A. S. Pringle Pattison, Scottish Philosophy, 1885; J. Bonar, 
Philosophy and Political Economy, 1893; L. Stephen, The English Utilitarians, 1900; E. 
Hal6vy, Formation du Radicalisme philosophique, 1901-4; E. Albee, History of English 
Utilitarianism, 1902; J. T. Merz, History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century 
(especially vols, iii., iv.), 1896-1914; A. W. Benn, English Rationalism in the Nineteenth 
Century, 1906; D. Masson, Recent British Philosophy, 1865; G. Dawes Hicks, in Ueberweg- 
Heinze, Geschichte der Philosophic 10th ed., part IV. §§ 54-62, 1910; H. Hdffding, Die 
englische Philosophic unserer Zeit (German transl.), 1889. 



3" 



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Sir Thomas More 

Libellvs vere avrevs nee minvs salvtaris qvam festiuus, de Optimo reip. statu. 

deque noua Insula Vtopia. (Louvain, 1516; rptd, Paris, 15 18; 2nd ed., 

Basle, 1 518.) 
A fruteful and pleasaunt worke of the beste state of a publyque weale, and of 

the newe yle called Utopia . . . translated into Englyshe by Ralphe 

Robynson. 1551. 

William Baldwin 

Treatise of moral Phylosophie, contayning the Sayinges of the Wyse. 1547. 

Thomas Wilson 

The Rule of Reason, conteining the arte of logique. 1552. 
The Arte of Rhetorique. 1 553. 

Ralph Lever 

Arte of Reason rightly termed Witcraft. 1573. 

EVERARD DlGBY 

Theoria analytica, Viam ad Monarchiam Scientiarum demonstrans, totius 
Philosophiae et reliquarum Scientiarum, necnon primorum postremo- 
rumque Philosophorum mysteria arcanaque dogmata enucleans. 1579. 

De duplici methodo libri duo, unicam P. Rami methodum refutantes. 1580. 

Everardi Digbei Cantabrigiensis admonitioni Francisci Mildapetti . . . 
responsio. 1580. 

De Arte Natandi. 1587. [Believed to be the earliest treatise on swimming 
published in England; transl. C. Middleton, 1595.] 
Cp. J. Freudenthal, Beitrage zur Geschichte der englischen Philosophic 

(two articles) in Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophic, vol. iv, 1891. 

William Temple 

Francisci Mildapetti Navarreni ad Everardum Digbeium Anglum Admonitio 
de unica P. Rami Methodo rejectis ceteris retinenda. 1580. 

Pro Mildapetti de unica methodo defensione contra Diplodophilum, commen- 
tatio Gulielmi Tempelli, e Regio Collegio Cantabrigiensis. Hue accessit 
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de Rami dialectica ad Joannem Piscatorem Argentinensem. 1581. 

Frankfort, 1584. 
P. Rami Dialecticae libri duo, scholiis G. Tempelli Cantabrigiensis illustrati. 

Cambridge, 1584. Frankfort, 1591, 1595. 
Jacobi Martini Scoti Dunkeldensis philosophiae professoris publici, in Academ- 

ia Taurinensi, de prima simplicium et concretorum corporum generatione 

disputatio. Cambridge, 1584. Frankfort, 1591, 1595. (Martin's book 

was first published at Turin, 1577.) 
Cp. J. Freudenthal, Beitrage zur Geschichte der englischen Philosophic in 
Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. v., 1892. 

John Case 

Summa veterum interpretum in universam Dialecticam Aristotelis. 1584. 

Oxford, 1592. Frankfort, 1593. 
Speculum moralium questionum in universam ethicen Aristotelis. Oxford, 

1585. Frankfort, 1589. 
Sphaera civitatis. Oxford, 1588. 
Reflexus speculi moralis. Oxford, 1596. 
Thesaurus Oeconomicae. Oxford, 1597. 
Lapis philosophicus. Oxford, 1599. London, 1612. 
Ancilla philosophiae. Oxford, 1599. 

John Sanderson 

Institutionum dialecticarum libri quatuor. Antwerp, 1589. Oxford, 1594, 
1602. 

William Perkins 

Armilla aurea. 1590. Eng. transl. 1600. 

The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience. 1608. 

Francis Bacon 1 

Philosophical Works 

i. Parts of the Instauratio Magna 

Instauratio magna. 1620. (After two pages beginning "Franciscus de Veru- 
lamio sic cogitavit," an epistle dedicated to the king, preface, distributio 
opens, and a page announcing "deest pars prima instaurationis, quae 
complectitur partitiones scientiarum," there follows a second title-page: 
Pars Secunda Operis, quae dicitur Novum Organum, sive Indicia Vera de 
interpretatione naturae. The same volume also contains: Parasceve ad 
Historiam Naturalem et Experimentalem.) 
Opera. Tomus primus. Qui continet De Augmentis Scientiarum libros ix. 
1623. (The second title is: de Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum libri 
ix.) 
1 In enumerating Bacon's separate works, Spedding's arrangement (instead of chrono- 
logical order) has been followed. 



Bibliography 315 

Historia Naturalis et Experimentalis ad condendam philosophiam : sive 
Phaenomena Universi: quae est Instaurationis Magnae pars tertia. 1622. 
(This volume contains Historia Ventorum, also titles and "aditus" to 
five other Historiae, namely, Densi et Ran, Gravis et Levis, Sympathiae 
et Antipathiae Rerum, Sulphuris Mercurii et Salis, Vitae et Mortis.) 

Historia Vitae et Mortis. Sive Titulus Secundus in Historia Naturali et Ex- 
perimentali ad condendam philosophiam : quae est Instaurationis Magnae 
pars tertia. 1623. 

Historia Densi et Rari (1658). x 

Sylva Sylvarum: or A Natural History. In ten centuries. Written by the 
Right Honourable Francis Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban. Published 
after the author's death by William Rawley. 1627. 

Scala intellectus, sive Filum Labyrinthi (1653) (a preface intended for the 
fourth part of the Instauratio). 

Prodromi, sive Anticipationes Philosophiae Secundae (1653) (a preface in- 
tended for the fifth part of the Instauratio). 

ii. Works connected with the Instauratio, but not intended 
to be included in it. 

Cogitationes de natura rerum (1653). 

De Fluxu et Refluxu Maris (1653). 

De Principiis atque Originibus secundum Fabulas Cupidinis et Coeli (1653). 

New Atlantis: a work unfinished. (First published by Rawley at the end of 

the volume containing Sylva Sylvarum in 1627. Ed. G. C. M. Smith, 

Cambridge, 1900.) 

iii. Works originally designed for parts of the Instauratio 
but superseded or abandoned. 

Cogitationes de Scientia Humana. (A series of fragments of uncertain date, 

first published by Spedding (Bacon's Works, vol. iii.), who supplied the 

title.) 
Valerius Terminus of the Interpretation of Nature; with the annotations of 

Hermes Stella (1734). 
The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon of the Proficience and Advancement of 

Learning Divine and Humane. 1605. 
Filum Labyrinthi, sive Formula Inquisitionis (1734) (little else than an English 

version of the Cogitata et Visa). 
De Interpretation Naturae Prooemium (1653). 
Temporis Partus Masculus sive Instauratio Magna Imperii Humani in Uni- 

versum (1653). 
Partis Instaurationis Secundae Delineatio et Argumentum, et Redargutio 

philosophiarum (1653, in part). 
Cogitata et Visa: de Interpretation Naturae, sive de Scientia Operativa 

(1653)- 

1 Writings published for the first time in posthumous collections have the date of the 
collection given in parentheses. Titles will be found under " Editions." 



316 Bibliography 

Filum Labyrinthi; sive Inquisitio Legitima de Motu (1653). 

Sequela Cartarum; sive Inquisitio Legitima de Calore et Frigore (1734). 

Historia et Inquisitio Prima de Sono et Auditu, et de Forma Soni et Latente 

Processu Soni; sive Sylva Soni et Auditus (1658). 
Phaenomena Universi; sive Historia Naturalis ad Condendam Philosophiam 

(1653). 
Descriptio Globi Intellectualis et Thema Coeli (1653). 
De Interpretatione Naturae Sententiae XII (1653). 
Aphorismi et Consilia (1653). 

Literary Works 

Essayes. Religious Meditations. Places of perswasion and disswasion. 
Seene and allowed. 1597. (There are ten essays in this volume. The 
Religious Meditations are in Latin and are entitled Meditationes Sacrae; 
the Places of perswasion and disswasion are in English and are entitled 
Coulers of Good and Evill; a fragment. Reprinted in 1598, 1604 and 1606.) 

The Essaies of Sir Francis Bacon Knight the kings solliciter generall. 16 12. 
(This volume contains essays only — thirty-eight in number, twenty-nine 
of them new, and the rest corrected and enlarged.) 

The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall, of Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount 
St Alban. 1625. (This volume contains fifty-eight essays, twenty of 
them being new and most of the rest altered and enlarged.) 

De Sapientia Veterum Liber, ad inclytam academiam Cantabrigiensem. 1609. 

The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh. 1622. 

Advertisement touching an Holy Warre. Written in the year 1622. 1629. 

Of the True Greatness of the Kingdom of Britain (1734). 

Apothegmes new and old. 1625. 

Promus of Formularies and Elegancies (begun 1594, published 1882, and in 
part by Spedding, vol. vii.). 

Translation of Certain Psalmes into English Verse- 1625. 

Professional Works 

Maxims of the Law (written about 1597; first printed 1630). 

Reading on the Statute of Uses (read at Gray's Inn in the Lent vacation, 1600; 
first printed in 1642). 

The Arguments of Law of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, The King's Solicitor- 
General, in certain great and difficult cases. (Revised by Bacon in 1616, 
but not published by him; first printed by Blackbourne in 1730.) 

Argument in Chudleigh's Case. (Easter Term, 1594.) (Translated from 
Law French and printed in Spedding's edition, vol. vii.) 

The Argument of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, His Majesty's Solicitor-general, 
in the Case of the Post-Nati of Scotland. (Delivered before Easter Term, 
1608; first printed in 1641.) 

The Argument of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, Attorney-General in the King's 
Bench, in the Case De Rege Inconsulto. (Delivered Jan. 25, 1616; first 
printed in Collectanea Jurid.) 

A Preparation towards the Union of Laws. 



Bibliography 317 

Occasional Writings (a selection) 

An Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of England 

(written 1589; first published as pamphlet, 1640). 
A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by 

Robert, late Earle of Essex. 1 60 1 . 
A Brief Discourse touching the Happy Union of the Kingdoms of England and 

Scotland (written 1603). 
Certain Considerations touching the better Pacification and Edification of the 

Church of England (written 1603). 
Sir Francis Bacon his Apologie, in certaine imputations concerning the late 

Earle of Essex. 1604. 
A Proposition to His Majesty . . . touching the Compiling and Amendment 

of the Laws of England (written 161 6, first published 1653). 

Editions 

1. Collections chiefly of works unpublished in his life- time: 

(a) Collected by W. Rawley: — Certaine Miscellany works. 1629. 

Operum moralium et civilium tomus primus. 1 638. Resuscitatio. 
1657. Opuscula varia posthuma. 1658. 

(b) Collected by I. Gruter : — Scripta in naturali et universali philosophia. 

Amsterdam, 1653. 

(c) Collected by R. Stephens: — Letters written during the reign of 

King James. 1702. Letters and Remains. 1734. 

2. Editions of collected works: by Schon wetter and Gruter, Frankfort, 1665; 

Mallet, 4 vols., 1740; Stephens, Locker and Birch, 5 vols., 1765; A. La- 
salle, French translation, 15 vols., Dijon, 1801-4; Montagu, 16 vols., 
1825-36; J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis and D. D. Heath, 14 vols., 1857-74. I n 
the last-named edition, vols, i.-iii. contain the Philosophical Works, vols, 
iv.-v. translations of the same, vols, vi.-vii. Literary and Professional 
Works, vols, viii.-xiv. the Letters and the Life. The Philosophical Works 
were edited in one volume by J. M. Robertson, 1905. 

3. Among editions of separate works mention may be made of the editions 
of the Advancement of Learning by W. A. Wright, Oxford, 1869, 5th ed., 
1900, and by T. Case, Oxford, 1906, and of the Novum Organum by T. 
Fowler, Oxford, 1878, 2d ed., 1889. 

Works on Bacon's Life and Philosophy 

E. A. Abbott. Bacon and Essex. 1877. 

Bacon: an account of his life and works. 1885. 

R. Adamson. In Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed. 
H. W. Blunt. Bacon's Method. Proc. of Aristotelian Soc. N. S. iv. 
E. Cassirer. In his Erkenntnisproblem in der Phil. u. Wissenschaft. 
R. W. Church. Bacon. 1884. 

R. L. Ellis. General Preface to the Philosophical Works, Bacon's Works, 
vol. i. 1857. 



3i8 Bibliography 

Fischer, Kuno. Francis Bacon und seine Schule. Entwicklungsgeschichte 
der Erfahrungsphilosophie. Vol. x of the Jubilaumsausgabe of his Gesch. 
d. neuern Phil. Heidelberg, 1904. (Third revised edition of a work origi- 
nally published in 1856, translated into English by J. Oxenford, 1857.) 

T. Fowler. Bacon. 1881. 

J. v. Liebig. Ueber Francis Bacon und die Methode der Naturforschung. 
Munich, 1863. 

Lord Macaulay. In Edinburgh Review, July, 1837 ; rptd in Essays. 

J. Nichol. Bacon. Edinburgh, 1888-^9. 

C. de Remusat. Bacon: sa vie, son temps, sa philosophie, et son influence 
jusqu'a nos jours. Paris, 1857. 

W. Whewell. Philosophy of Discovery. Chaps, xv., xvi. i860. 

Sir Richard Barckley 
A Discourse of the Felicitie of Man: or his Summum bonum. 1598. 

Sir John Davies 

Nosce Teipsum. This Oracle expounded in two Elegies. 1. Of Humane 
knowledge. 2. Of the Soule of Man, and the immortalitie thereof. 
1599- [The Complete Poems. Ed. A. B. Grosart, 1869, 1876.] 

William Gilbert 

Guilielmi Gilberti Colcestrensis, medici londinensis, de Magnete, magneti- 
cisque corporibus, et de magno magnete tellure; Physiologia nova, pluri- 
mis et argumentis, et experimentis demonstrata. 1600. 

De Mundo nostro Sublunari Philosophia Nova. Opus posthumum. Am- 
sterdam, 1 65 1. 

George Downham 
In Petri Rami Dialecticam. 1606. 

Joseph Hall 

Characters of Vertues and Vices. 1 608. 

Resolutions and Decisions of Diverse practicall cases of Conscience. 1649. 

John Selden 

The Duello or Single Combat. 1 6 1 0. 

De Dis Syris Syntagmata II. 161 7. 

The Historie of Tithes. 1 6 1 8. 

Mare Clausum seu de dominio maris. 1635. 

De Successionibus ad leges Ebraeorum. 1638. 

De jure naturali et gentium juxta disciplinam Hebraeorum. 1640. 



Bibliography 319 

Brief Discourse of the Powers of the Peers and Commons. 1640. 
Table Talk . . . edited by R. Mil ward. 1689. 
Opera Omnia. Ed. D. Wilkins. 1723. 

Robert Sanderson 

Logicae artis compendium. Oxford, 161 5. 

De juramenti promissorii obligatione praelectiones septem. Habitae . . . 

A.D. MDCXLVI. 1647. 

translated into English by his Majesties speciall command. 1655. 

De obligatione conscientiae praelectiones decern . . . habitae A.D. mdcxlvii. 

1660. (Ed., with Eng. notes, by W. Whewell, Cambridge, 1851, and in 

Eng. trans, by Wordsworth, bp Chr., Lincoln, 1877.) 
Works. Ed. W. Jacobson. Oxford, 1854. 

Robert Fludd 

Utriusque Cosmi majoris scilicet et minoris, Metaphysica, physica atque 

technica Historia. Frankfort, 16 17. 
Medicina Catholica, seu mysticum artis medicandi sacrarum (Integrum Mor- 

borum mysterium). Frankfort, 1629. 
Clavis Philosophiae et Alchymiae. Frankfort, 1633. 
Philosophia Moysaica. Gouda, 1638 (in English, 1659). 

Richard Crakanthorp 

Introductio in metaphysicam. Oxford, 16 19. 
Logicae libri quinque de praedicabilibus. 1622. 
De Providentia Dei tractatus. Cambridge, 1623. 

Nathanael Carpenter 

Philosophia libera, triplici exercitationum Decade proposita, in qua adversus 
hujus temporis Philosophos dogmata quaedam nova discutiuntur. Ed. 
secunda. Oxford, 1622. (1st ed. in 1621.) 

Martin Fotherby 
Atheomastix; clearing foure truthes, against atheists and infidels. 1622. 

Edward Herbert 

De Veritate, prout distinguitur a Revelatione, a Verisimili, a Possibili, et a 

Falso. Paris, 1624. 
De Religione Gentilium, errorumque apud eos causis. Amsterdam, 1663, 
Eng. transl. 1709. 
Cp. C. Guttler, Lord Herbert von Cherbury, 1897; G. V. Lechler, Ge- 
schichte des englischen Deismus, 1841 ; C. de R£musat, Lord Herbert de Cher- 
bury, 1874; W. R. Sorley, in Mind, October, 1894. 



320 Bibliography 

George Hakewill 

An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God. Oxford, 
1627. 

Thomas Hobbes 

Eight Books of the Peloponnesian War written by Thucydides the son of 

Olorus interpreted with faith and diligence immediately out of the Greek. 

1629. 
De Mirabilibus Pecci. 1636. [With Eng. trans, "by a person of quality." 

1678.] 
The Elements of Law Natural and Politic. (Circulated in MS. 1640, first pub- 
lished as a whole and under this title by F. Tonnies, 1889.) 
Objectiones ad Cartesii Meditationes de prima philosophia vulgo dictae Objec- 

tiones Tertiae. (First published in Descartes's Meditationes, 1641.) 
Tractatus Opticus. (Published by Mersenne in his Cogitata Physico-Mathe- 

matica, 1644.) 
Elementorum Philosophiae, Sectio tertia, De Cive. Paris, 1642. [The 2d ed., 

with new notes and preface, was entitled Elementa Philosophica De Cive, 

Amsterdam, 1647.] 
Humane Nature; or the Fundamental Elements of Policy. 1650. [Consists of 

chaps, i.-xiii. of The Elements of Law.] 
De Corpore Politico; or the Elements of Law, Moral and Politick. 1650. 

[Consists of chaps, xiv.-end of The Elements of Law.] 
Epistolica dissertatio de principiis justi et decori; continens apologiam pro 

tractatu de cive. Amsterdam, 165 1. 
Philosophicall Rudiments concerning Government and Society. 1651. [An 

English version of De Cive.] 
Leviathan Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasti- 

call and Civil. 165 1. 
Of Liberty and Necessity. 1654. [A publication, not authorized by Hobbes, 

of a reply by him to the arguments of Bishop Bramhall, written for the 

marquis of Newcastle in 1646.] 
Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio prima, De Corpore. 1655. (Eng. trans. 

with an appendix entitled " Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics," 

1656.) 
The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance. 1656. 

"Zrtyfjuxi Ay eufieT plat, Aypoiiclas, AvrlrroXirelas, A/xadeias t or Marks of the 

Absurd Geometry, Rural Language, Scottish Church Politics, and Bar- 
barisms, of John Wallis. 1657. 
Elementorum Philosophiae sectio secunda, De Homine. 1658. 
Examinatio et Emendatio Mathematicae hodiernae qualis explicatur in libris 

Johannis Wallisii. 1660. 
Dialogus Physicus, sive de Natura Aeris. . . . Item de duplicatione cubi. 

1661. 
Seven Philosophical Problems and Two Propositions of Geometry . . . with 

an Apology for Himself and his Writings. 1662. 



Bibliography 32 1 

Problemata Physica. 1662. 

Mr. Hobbes considered in his loyalty, religion, reputation and manners. 1662, 

1680. [The latter ed. entitled Considerations upon the Reputation, etc.] 
De Principiis et Ratiocinatione Geometrarum. 1666. 
Opera Philosophica, quae Latine scripsit, Omnia. Amsterdam, 1668. [Part 1 

rpts De Corpore, De Homine and De Cive; Part 11, other mathematical 

and physical pieces; Part in is a Latin trans, of Leviathan, with a new 

appendix instead of the former "Review and Conclusion."] 
Quadratura Circuli. Cubatio Sphaerae. Duplicatio Cubi. 1669. 
Rosetum Geometricum . . . cum censura brevi doctrinae Wallisianae de 

motu. 1 67 1. 
Three Papers presented to the Royal Society against Dr. Wallis. 1671. 
Lux Mathematica excussa collisionibus Jchannis Wallisii et Thomae Hobbesii. 

1672. 
Principia et Problemata aliquot geometrica antehac desperata nunc breviter 

explicata et demonstrata. 1674. 
The Travels of Ulysses, as they were related by himself in Homer's 9th, 10th, 

1 ith, and 12th books of his Odysses. 1673. 
The Iliads and Odysses of Homer. Translated out of Greek into English. 

1676. 
Decamerum Physiologicum ; or Ten Dialogues of Natural Philosophy. 1678. 
Behemoth; The History of the Civil Wars of England. 1679 (imperfect), 1682. 
Thomae Hobbes Malmesburiensis Vita carmine expressa. 1679. (Eng. trans. 

1680.) 
An Historical Narration concerning Heresie and the punishment thereof. 

1680. 
A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of 

England. 1681. 
The Whole Art of Rhetoric. 1681 (written some thirty years before). 
An answer to a Book published by Dr. Bramhall called the "Catching of the 

Leviathan." 1682 (written 1668). 
Historia Ecclesiastica carmine elegiaco concinnata. 1688. (Eng. trans. 1722.) 

Editions oj Hobbes* s Works 

The only complete edition of the works is that by Sir W. Molesworth, Latin 
Works, 5 vols., English Works, 1 1 vols., 1839-45. Elements of Law and Behe- 
moth were ed. from a revision of the MSS. by F. Tonnies, in 1889. Leviathan 
has been rptd, Oxford, 188 1 and 1909, and the text ed. by A. R. Waller, Cam- 
bridge, 1904. 

Works on Hobbes 

J. J. Baumann. Lehren von Raum, Zeit und Mathematik. 1868. (i., pp. 

237-356.) 
G. Lyon. La philosophic de Hobbes. 1893. 
R. Mondolfo. La morale di T. Hobbes. 1903. 
G. C. Robertson. Hobbes. 1886. 



322 Bibliography 

Sir L. Stephen. Hobbes. 1904. 

G. Tarantino. Saggio sulle idee morali e politiche di T. Hobbes. 1900. 

A. E. Taylor. Hobbes. 1909. 

F. Tonnies. Hobbes, Leben und Lehre. 1896; 2d ed., 19 12. 

Anmerkungen liber die Philosophie des Hobbes (4 articles), in Viertel- 

jahrsschrif t fiir wissenschaf tliche Philosophie. 1 879-8 1 . 

William Ames 

De conscientia et ejus jure vel casibus. 1630. (English trans. 1639.) 

Robert Greville, Lord Brooke 

A Discourse opening the nature of that Episcopacie which is exercised in 

England. 1641. 
The Nature of Truth, its union and unity with the Soule. 1641. 

Cp. J. Freudenthal, Beitrage zur Geschichte der englischen Philosophie 
(two articles), in Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie, vi., 1893. 

Henry More 

Psychozoia Platonica: or a Platonicall Song of the Soul. 1642. 

Philosophical Poems [including the above]. 1647. Edited by A. B. Grosart, 

1878. 
An Antidote against Atheism. 1653. 
Conjectiva Cabbalistica. 1653. 
Enthusiasmus Triumphatus. 1656. 
The Immortality of the Soule. 1659. 
The Grande Mystery of Godliness. 1660. 
A Collection of several Philosophical Writings, 2d ed., 1662. 
Enchiridion Ethicum. 1666. 
Divine Dialogues. 1668. 
Enchiridion Metaphysicum. 1671. 
Opera omnia. 1675-79. 

Ralph Cudworth 

Discourse concerning the true notion of the Lord's Supper. 1642. 
Sermon preached before the House of Commons, 31 March, 1647. 
The True Intellectual System of The Universe. 1678; Latin trans, with notes 

by J. L. Mosheim. Jena, 1733. 
A Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. With preface by E. 

Chandler. 1731. 

John Wallis 

Truth tried, or Animadversions on a Treatise published by Robert lord Brook. 

1643. 
Elenchus geometriae Hobbianae. Oxford, 1655. 



Bibliography 323 

Due correction for Mr. Hobbes; or schoole discipline, for not saying his lessons 

right. Oxford, 1656. 
Hobbiani puncti dispunctio ... in answer to M. Hobs's <mynal. Oxford, 

1657- 
Hobbius heauton-timorumenos. Oxford, 1662. 
Thomae Hobbes quadratura circuli . . . confutata. Oxford, 1669. 

Sir Kenelm Digby 

Two Treatises, in the one of which, the Nature of Bodies; in the other, the 
Nature of Mans soule; is looked into: in way of Discovery of the Im- 
mortality of reasonable soules. Paris, 1644. 

Of bodies, and of man's soul. To discover the immortality of reasonable souls. 
With two discourses of the power of sympathy and of the vegetation of 
plants. 1669. 

John Bramhall 

The Serpent Salve; or, A Remedy for the biting of an Aspe. 1643/4. [A de- 
fence of monarchy, and criticism of the view that all power is derived from 
the people.] 

A Defence of the True Liberty of Human Actions from Antecedent and Ex- 
trinsicall Necessity. 1655. 

Castigations of Mr. Hobbes his last Animadversions in the case concerning 
Liberty and Universal Necessity. With an appendix concerning the catch- 
ing of Leviathan or the great Whale. 1658. 

Works. Dublin, 1674-7; Oxford, 1842. 

Alexander Ross 

The Philosophicall Touch-Stone; or Observations upon Sir K. Digbie's Dis- 
courses. 1645. 

Arcana Microcosmi. 1652. 

Tlawtpeia: or, a View of all Religions in the World. 1653. 

Leviathan drawn out with a hook; or Animadversions on Mr. Hobbes his 
Leviathan. 1653. 

Thomas White 

Institutionum Peripateticarum ad mentem. . . . K. Digbaei pars theorica. 

Leyden, 1646 (in Eng. 1656). 
The Grounds of Obedience and Government. 1655. 
Sciri, sive sceptices et scepticorum a jure disputationis exclusio. 1663. 

Sir Robert Filmer 

The Free-holders Grand Inquest, Touching our Sovereign Lord the King And 
His Parliament. 1647. 



324 Bibliography 

The Anarchy of a Limited or Mixed Monarchy. 1648. 
The Necessity of the Absolute Power of all Kings. 1648. 
Observations concerning the Originall of Government. 1652. 
Patriarchal or the Natural Power of Kings. 1680. 

Seth Ward 

A philosophicall essay towards an eviction of the being and attributes of God. 

1652. 
Vindiciae academiarum, . . . with an appendix concerning what M. Hobbs 

and M. Dell have published on this argument. 1654. 
In Tho. Hobbii philosophiam exercitatio epistolica. 1656. 

Nathanael Culverwel 

An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature. 1652. (Ed. 
J. Brown. Edinburgh, 1857; Selections in Campagnac, The Cambridge 
Platonists, 1901, pp. 21 1-32 1.) 

John Worthington 

The Christian's Pattern: a translation of the De Imitatione of Thomas a Kem- 

pis. 1654. 
Select Discourses. 1725. 
Diary and Correspondence; ed. by J. Crossley. Manchester, 1847-86. 

Thomas Stanley 

The History of Philosophy: containing The Lives, Opinions, Actions and Dis- 
courses of the Philosophers of every Sect. 1655. 



Truth appearing. 1655. 
Theologia mystica. 1683. 



John Pordage 



James Harrington 



The Common-wealth of Oceana. 1656. 

The Prerogative of Popular Government. 1658. 

A Discourse shewing that the spirit of Parliaments with a Council in the inter- 
val, is not to be trusted for a Settlement. 1659. 

A Discourse upon this saying "the Spirit of the nation is net yet to be trusted 
with Liberty." 1659. 

The Art of Law-giving : in in books. 1 659. 

Aphorisms political. [1659.] 

Political Discourses: tending to the introduction of a free . . . Common- 
wealth in England. 1660. 



Bibliography 325 

The Oceana and other Works . . . collected . . . by John Toland. 1700. 
Cp. J. Russell Smith, Harrington and his Oceana. 1914. 

Matthew Wren 

Considerations on Mr. Harrington's . . . Oceana. 1657. 
Monarchy asserted ... in vindication of the Considerations upon Mr. Har- 
rington's Oceana. Oxford, 1659. 

Thomas Pierce 
AirroKaraKpiats . . . with occasional reflexions on . . . Master Hobbs. 1658. 

Jeremy Taylor 

Ductor Dubitantium, or the Rule of Conscience in all her measures; serving 
as a great Instrument for the determination of Cases of Conscience. 1660. 

Henry Stubbe 

The Commonwealth of Oceana put into the Ballance. 1660. 
Campanella revived, or an inquiry into the history of the Royal Society. 
1670. 

Hon. Robert Boyle 

New Experiments Physico-mechanical. 1660. 

An Examen of Mr. T. Hobbes his Dialogus physicus de natura aeris. 1662. 

New Experiments and Observations touching Cold. ... To which are 

added an Examen of antiperistasis, and an examen of Mr. Hobs's doctrine 

about cold. 1665. (3rd ed. with defence against Hobbes 's objections. 

1682.) 
Tracts, containing ... 2 Animadversions upon Mr. Hobbes's problemata de 

vacuo. 1674. 

John Smith 

Select Discourses. 1660. (Selections in Campagnac, The Cambridge Platon- 
ists, I90i,pp. 77-I57-) 

Joseph Glanvill 

The Vanity of Dogmatizing : or Confidence in Opinions. 1661 . 

Scepsis Scientifica: or, Confest Ignorance, the Way to Science. 1665. 

Plus Ultra; or the Progress and Advancement of Knowledge since the days of 

Aristotle. 1668. 
Philosophia Pia; or, a discourse of the religious temper, and tendencies of the 

experimental philosophy which is profest by the Royal Society. 167 1. 



326 Bibliography 

Essays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion. 1676. 
[Contains: (i) Against Confidence in Philosophy; (ii) Of Scepticism and 
Certainty; (iii) Modern Improvements of Knowledg; (iv) The Usefulness 
of Philosophy to Theology; (v) The Agreement of Reason and Religion; 
(vi) Against Sadducism in the Matter of Witchcraft; (vii) Antifanatick 
Theologie, and Free Philosophy. In a continuation of the New Atlantis.] 

Sadducismus Triumphatus; or, Full and Plain Evidence concerning Witches 
and Apparitions. 1681. 

Simon Patrick 

A brief account of the new Sect of Latitude-Men together with some reflec- 
tions on the New Philosophy. 1662. 

William Lucy 

Observations, Censures and Confutations of notorious errours in Mr. Hobbes 
his Leviathan and other his bookes [a revised issue of two tracts, published 
in 1656 (?) and 1657, under the pseudonym of William Pyke]. 1663. 
Cp. T. Loveday, in Mind, N.S., vol. xvii., pp. 493-501. 

George Lawson 

An Examination of the Political part of Mr. Hobbs his Leviathan. 1663. 

Joseph Beaumont (1616-99) 

Some Observations upon the Apologie of Dr. H. More for his Mystery of God- 
liness. Cambridge, 1665. 

Samuel Parker 

Tentamina physico-theologica de Deo. 1665. 

A free and impartial censure of the Platonick Philosophic Oxford, 1666. 

An account of the nature and extent of the Divine Dominion and Goodness, 
especially as they refer to the Origenian Hypothesis concerning the Pre- 
existence of Souls. Oxford, 1667. 

A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie, wherein the authority of the Civil Magis- 
trate over the Consciences of Subjects in matters of external religion, is 
asserted; the mischiefs and inconveniences of Toleration are reprobated, 
and all pretences pleaded on behalf of Liberty of Conscience are fully 
answered. 1670 [answered by John Owen. Truth and Innocence Vin- 
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David Ricardo 

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George Combe 

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Thomas Chalmers 

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James Mill 

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George Bentham 
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John Austin 

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Thomas Carlyle 

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William Henry Smith (1 808-1 872) 

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George Boole 

The mathematical analysis of Logic. Cambridge, 1847. 
An Analysis of the Laws of Thought on which are founded the mathematical 
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Thomas Spencer Baynes 

An Essay on the new analytic of logical forms. 1850. 

James M'Cosh 

Method of Divine government. 1850. 

Intuitions of the Mind. i860. 

Present State of Moral Philosophy in England. 1868. 

Scottish Philosophy from Hutcheson to Hamilton. 1875. 

Development: what it can and what it cannot do. 1884. 

Harriet Martineau 

Letters on the laws of man's nature and development. (With H. G. Atkin- 
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The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte freely translated and condensed. 

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Autobiography. 1877. 

Henry Longueville Mansel 

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Henry Calderwood 

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The Power of Sound. 1880. 

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INDEX 



The Index contains the personal names which occur in the text or notes and the 
names in the bibliography which are printed in capitals. 

Baur, F. C, 146 

Baxter, Andrew, 339 

Baynes, T. S., 237, 238, 353 

Beattie, James, 198, 343 

Beaumont, Joseph, 326 

Beccaria, Marchese de, 159, 215, 218, 

223 
Beesly, E. S., 362 
Bellarmine, R. F. R., 72 
Bentham, George, 349 
Bentham, Jeremy, 156, 159, 182, 195, 
202, 206-225, 230 f., 234, 236, 244- 
246, 251, 344 
Bentham, Samuel, 207 f . 
Bentley, R., 147, 152, 331 
Berkeley, George, 43, 57, 94, 102, 
130-141, 158, 172, 191, 193, 199, 
206, 236, 276, 279, 284 f., 288, 
292, 335; Alciphron, 133, 135, 139; 
Common-place Book, 131, 135, 
140; Hylas, 131, 139; New Theory 
of Vision, 131, 135-137; Principles 
of Human Knowledge, 131, 137- 
139; Sins, i34> J 4o 
Blackstone, Sir W., 211-213 
Blair, Hugh, 167 
Blount, Charles, 142 f., 328 
Boehme, Jacob, 100 
Bold, Samuel, 126, 333 
Bolingbroke, Lord, 141, 150, 341 
Boole, George, 238, 353 
Bosanquet, B., 284, 363 
Bo wring, Sir J., 211 
Boyle, Robert, 56, 116, 325 
Bradley, F. H., 282-284, 360 
Bradwardine, Thomas, 1 
Bramhall, John, 52, 56, 72 f., 323 
Brandenburg, Elector of, 104 
Bridges, J. H., 256,356 
Brooke, Lord, 42-44, 97, 322 
Broughton, John, 126, 334 



Abercrombie, J., 349 

Adamson, R., 6, 125, 288, 360 

Alcuin of York, 1 

Alexander, S., 364 

Alison, Archibald, 347 

Allen, Grant, 360 

Ames, W., 44, 322 

Annet, 'Peter, 141, 149, 339 

Anselm, 81 

Aquinas, St. Thomas, 5 f., 42, 98 

Argyll, eighth Duke of, 357 

Aristotle, 3, 5, 8-11, 25, 32, 48,95, 

100, 237, 246, 254 
Ascham, R., 10, 
Aubrey, John, 47, 49, 58 
Augustine, St., 128 
Aurelius, Marcus, 156 f. 
Austin, John, 350 

B 

Bacon, Anthony, 15, 17 

Bacon Francis, 6, 9, 12 f., 14-34, 35 f., 
48 f., 57, 68 f., ioc, 107, 206, 261, 
290, 314; Advancement of Learning, 
14 f., 21 f., 24, 31 f.; Essays, 17, 
31; De Augmentis Scientiarum, 17, 
21 f., 23, 27, 31 f. ; New Atlantis, 17, 
20, 69 f., 100; Novum Organum, 17, 
23-31; Sylva Sylvarum, 17, 21 

Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 15-16 

Bacon, Roger, 1,5 f. 

Bagehot, W., 270, 358 

Bailey, Samuel, 348 

Bain, A., 232, 254 f., 285, 354 

Baldwin, W., 14, 313 

Balfour, A. J. f 362 

Balguy, John, 155, 338 

Barckley, R., 14, 318 

Barratt, Alfred, 358 



367 



368 



Index 



Brown, Thomas, 204 f., 236, 238, 241, 

348 
Browne, Peter, 134 f., 333 
Buccleuch, third Duke of, 182 
Buckingham, first Duke of, 16, 20, 

36 
Burghley, Lord, 9, II, 15 f., 19 
Burke, Edmund, 194, 207 
Burnet, Thomas, 126, 328 
Burnet, Thomas (of Kemnay), 126 
Burthogge, R., 127, 327 
Burton, J. H., 163, 166 
Butler, Joseph, 143, 151, 160-162, 

272, 338 



Caird, Edward, 282-283, 285, 361 

Caird, John, 281, 362 

Calderwood, H., 354 

Campanella, T., 69 

Campbell, George, 198, 342 

Carlyle, T., 234, 243, 245, 278, 350 

Caroline, Queen, 133 

Carpenter, N., 13, 319 

Carpenter, W. B., 359 

Carroll, W., 334 

Case, John, 8, 314 

Case, Thomas, 364 

Chalmers, T., 348 

Charles I, 44, 71 

Charles II, 51, 54 

Charles the Bald, 3 

Charles the Great, I 

Chubb, Thomas, 141, 149, 337 

Clarendon, Earl of, 66, 72 

Clarke, John, 337 

Clarke, John, Junior, 338 

Clarke, Joseph, 339 

Clarke, Samuel, 131, 133, 143, 147, 

148-149, 151-179, 174, 272, 333 
Cliff e, Leslie, T. E., 270, 361 
Clifford, W. K., 268, 362 
Cobbe, F. P., 354 
Cockburn, C, 126, 334 _ 
Cockburn, Lord, 167 
Coleridge, S. T., 224, 234, 236, 245 f., 

276, 348 
Collier, Arthur, 140, 336 
Collins, Anthony, 107, 141, 143, 147 f., 

335 
Combe, George, 348 
Comte, A., 247, 253, 256, 266 
Condillac, E. B. de, ill, 291 
Condorcet, Marquis de, 226 
Congreve, R., 256, 354 
Cooke, Sir Anthony, 15 
Copernicus, 13, 260 
Cousin, V., 240 
Crakanthorp, R., 319 



Cromwell, Oliver, 70 

Cudworth, R., 73 f., 87-95, 96, 97. 105, 

155, *94> 207, 292, 322 
Culverwel, N., 74, 77, 97-98, 324 
Cumberland, Richard, 100-101, 327 
Cunningham, W., 120 



Darwin, C, 31, 228, 260-261, 265 - 

266, 270, 291 
Davidson, T., 362 
Davies, Sir John, 41-43, 318 
Democritus, 88 f., 116 
De Morgan, A., 238, 351 
Derham, W., 196, 337 
Descartes, R., 36 f., 50, 52, 60, 73, 

77-79> 83-85, 88, 94, 99 f., 103, 109, 

116, 117, 127 f., 134-137, Hi, 

153. 165, 199, 236, 290 
Devonshire, first Earl of, 48 f . 
Devonshire, second Earl of, 48 f. 
Devonshire, third Earl of, 49 f., 54 
Diderot, Denis, 158 
Digby, Everard, 8-12, 43, 313 
Digby, Sir Kenelm, 46, 99, 323 
Dionysius the Areopagite, 3 
Dodwell, Henry, 335 
Dodwell, Henry, Junior, 141, 149, 340 
Douglas, J., 196 
Dowell, John, 328 
Downham, John, 318 
Dumont, E., 209, 222 
Duns Scotus, John, 1, 5-7 
Dupont de Nemours, P. S., 183 



Eachard, John, 73, 327 
Edwards, John, 330 
Edwards, Jonathan, 133 
Elizabeth, Queen, 16, 47 
Ellis, R. L., 18 
Epictetus, 156 
Erigena, John Scotus, 1, 3-5 
Essex, Earl of, 10, 20 
Euclid, 50, 54 



Ferguson, Adam, 343 
Ferrier, J. F., 276-277, 353 
Fichte, J. G., 237, 276, 288 
Filmer, Sir R., 71 f., 119 f., 323 
Fischer, Kuno, 49, 292 
Flint, Robert, 359 
Fludd, R., 13, 319 
Fotherby, M., 42, 319 
Fowler, E., 74 
Fowler, T., 27, 357 



Index 



369 



Foxwell, H. S., 230 
Fraser, A. C, 284-285, 355 



Gale, Theophilus, 100, 327 

Galileo, G., 13, 30, 49 f., 60, 116, 

260 
Gait, J., 215 
Gassendi, Pierre, 50, 53 
Gay, John, 191, 339 
Geulincx, Arnold, 127 
Gibbon, E., 182, 223 
Gilbert, W., 12 f., 25, 318 
Gildon, Charles, 142 
Glanvill, Joseph, 99-100, 325 
Glisson, Francis, 327 
Godwin, W., 226 
Goldsmith, O., 193 
Graham, W., 358 
Grant, Sir A., 11 

Green, T. H., 271, 280-284, 287, 359 
Grosseteste, Robert, 1 
Grote, George, 225, 243, 254, 355 
Grote, John, 257-258, 356 
Grotius, H., 36, 45, 71 
Gurney, Edmund, 362 



H 



Hakewill, G., 42, 320 

Haldane, Lord, 363 

Hales, Alexander of, 1,5 

Halevy, E., 221 

Hall, Joseph, 44, 318 

Hamilton, Sir W., 234-242, 246, 249, 

262, 276, 284-285, 352 
Hampton, B., 336 
Harper, T. N., 362 
Harrington, James, 63-71, 324 
Harris, James, 341 
Harrison, F., 256 
Hartley, David, 191-193, 195, 232, 

255, 34i 

Harvey, W., 13, 31, 33 

Heath, D. D., 20 

Hegel, G. F. W., 234, 237, 240, 246, 
275-282, 284, 286, 290-291 

Helv£tius, C. A., 214, 223, 236 

Herbert, A. E. W. M., 363 

Herbert, George, 35 

Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, 35-43, 
48, 142, 292, 319 

Herbert, T. M., 361 

Herschel, Sir J., 247, 349 

Hinton, James, 355 

Hobbes, T., 33, 46, 47-74, 76, 78 f., 
87 f., 100, 102, 107, 1 16, 1 19 f., 157, 
159 f., 169, 182, 206, 246, 256, 261, 
290, 292, 320; De Cive, 53, 59; De 



Corpore, 54, 59; De Cor pore Politico, 
5i',De Homine, 54 ; Elements of Law, 
51, 59, 62; Human Nature, 51 ; Levi- 
athan, 53-63 ; Of Liberty and Neces- 
ityt 55 J Philosophical Rudiments, 53, 
59 ; Questions concerning Liberty, 55 ; 
Short Tract on First Principles, 50 

Hobhouse, L. T., 365 

Hodgson, S. H., 271, 274-275, 356 

Hoffding, H., 3 

Hooker, R., 14, 64, 98, 112 

Hume, David, 33, 43, 57, 102, inf., 
118, 126, 137, 140, 163-182, 184, 
191-193, 194, 198-202, 206, 214,215, 
223, 225, 227, 232, 236, 247-256, 
276, 279 f.,285, 291 i., 340; Dialogues 
concerning Natural Religion, 167, 
178-180; Enquiry concerning Hu- 
man Understanding, 166, 171 f., 
1 76 f . ; Enquiry concerning the Prin- 
ciples of Morals, 166, I77f. ; Essays 
and Treatises, 1 66 f . ; Essays Moral 
and Political, 165; Four Disserta- 
tions, 166 f.; Natural History of 
Religion, 152, 167; Of Miracles, 
178 f. , 178; Political Discourses, 
166, 180; Treatise of Human Na- 
ture, 137, 164-178, 190 

Hunt, J., 149 

Hutcheson, Francis, 158-160, 184, 
216, 219, 337 

Huxley, T. H., 267-268, 355 



J 



Jackson, John, 339 
James I, 10, 16 f., 35 
Jevons, W. S., 254, 358 
Jones, Sir H., 364 
Jonson, Ben, 48 

K 

Karnes, Lord, 341 

Kant, I., 33, 37, 108, 179, 199, 236, 
24of.,275 f., 278-279, 282, 286, 291 
Keill, John, 331 
Kepler, 13, 30 
King, W., 126, 192, 334 



Lamb, C., 157 

Lansdowne, Marquis of, 209 

Lardner, N., 196 

Lasswitz, K., 12 

Laud, W., 75 

Laurie, S. S., 286, 356 

Law, Edmund, 192, 338 



370 



Index 



Law, W., 1 60, 337 

Lawson, G., 326 

Leclerc, Jean, 105 

Lee, Henry, 126, 334 

Legrand, Antoine, 100, 327 

Leibniz, G. W. v., 33, 126, 144, 146, 
153, 236, 287, 291 

Leicester, Earl of, 8 

Leslie, Charles, 142 f., 332, 

Lever, Ralph, 14, 313 

Lewes, G. H., 266-267, 352 

Limborch, Philip van, 105 

Locke, J., 37, 40, 71 f., 102-129, 134- 
137, 141, 143 f., 147 f., 153 f., 155, 
156 f., 168 f., 171, 193, 194, 196, 
199 f.,-206, 216, 236, 244 f., 276, 
285, 291-293, 329; Conduct of the 
Understanding, 107, 124; Epis- 
tola de Tolerantia, 105 f., 121-123; 
Essay concerning Human Under- 
standing, 102, 104-119, 134, 137, 
144; Letters to the Bishop of Wor- 
cester, 106; Reasonableness of Chris- 
tianity, 107, 143, 144; Some 
Considerations of Interest and Money, 
107, 121 f.;Some Thoughts concern- 
ing Education, 107, 124; Two Trea- 
tises of Government, 106, 1 19-120 

Lowde, James, 331 

Lowndes, W., 121 

Lucy, W., 326 

Lully, R., 42 



M 



Macaulay, Lord, 18, 231 
McCosh, James, 353 
Machiavelli, N., 31 
Mackenzie, J. S., 364 
Mackintosh, Sir J., 202, 231, 347 
McTaggart, J. McT. E., 365 
Maine, Sir H. J. S., 270, 355 
Malebranche, N., 107, 127 f., 134, 

T4I 

Mallet, B., 150 
Malthus, T. R., 225-229, 247 
Mandeville, B., 159, 336 
Mansel, H. L., 242, 262, 353 
Mansfield, Lord, 207 
Martin, J., 11 
Martineau, H., 256, 353 
Martineau, J., 258-259, 350 
Masham, Lady, 105 
Masham, Sir Francis, 105 
Masson, D., 234 
Maurice, J. F. D., 258, 357 
Mayne, Zachary, 126, 338 
Melville, A., 11 
Melville, J., 11 
Menger, A., 230 



Mersenne, Marin, 50-52 

Merz, J. T., 293 

Middleton, C., 151 

Mill, James, 191, 204, 210 f., 229- 

232, 234, 243, 255, 349 
Mill, J. S., 211, 215, 223, 231-234, 

236, 243-256, 269-272, 279, 291- 

292,350 
Milner, John, 333 j ^ 
Milton, John, 33, 7I, 78, 122, 327 
Mirabeau, Comte de, 209 
Molyneux, William, 107, 117, 135, 

331 

Monboddo, Lord, 344 
Montesquieu, E. L., de S., 180 
More, Henry, 73-75, 77-88, 92, 94, 
96, 97, 99, 127, 207, 292, 313, 322 
More, Sir Thomas, 43, 68, f. 
Morell, J. D., 353 
Morgan, Thomas, 141, 149, 338 
Moschus, 89 
Moses, 67, 89 
Muirhead, J. H., 365 
Muller, F. Max, 361 
Mullinger, J. B., 11 



N 



Napier, John, 30 

Napier, M., 231 

Nettleship, R. L., 365 

Newcastle, Marquis of, 51 

Newman, J. H., 258, 352 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 107, 135, 150, 

153, 191,291 
Nietzsche, F. W., 292 
Nieuwentyt, 196 
Norris, John, 107, 127-1^8, 141, 292, 

328 



O 



Ockham, William of, 1, 5, 7 
Orme, W., 122 
Oswald, James, 198 f., 343 
Owen, John, 121 f. 



Paley, W., 193, 196-197, 208, 219, 

225-226, 346 
Paracelsus, 13 
Parker, Samuel, 100, 326 
Patrick, Simon, 74, 326 
Pattison, Mark, 132 
Paul, St., 3 
Paulet, Sir Amyas, 16 
Perkins, W., 44, 314 
Perronet, V., 126, 339 



Index 



37i 



Picton, J. A., 358 

Pierce, Thomas, 325 

Piscator of Strasbourg, 11 

Pitt, W., 226 

Plato, 73-78, 89, 95 f., 128, 134, 

156 f., 223, 254 
Plotinus, 75, 77, 91, 96 
Pope, A., 18, 150 
Popple, William, 106 
Pordage, 100, 324 
Porter, Noah, 126 
Price, Richard, I93-J95, 223, 341 
Priestley, Joseph, 159, 194 f., 214- 

216, 223, 255, 343 
Pringle-Pattison, A. S., 363 
Proast, Jonas, 331 
Proclus, 95 f. 
Pythagoras, 89 

Q 

Quesnay, Francois, 183 



Rae, J., 183 

Ramus, Peter, 10 f., 33, 42 

Rand, B., 132 

Rashdall, H., 364 

Rawley, W., 16, 23 

Ray, John, 196, 331, 

Read, Carveth, 361 

Reid, Thomas, 195, 198-203, 235, 

237-238, 272, 289, 292, 341 
Reuchlin, J., 10 
Reynolds, Sir J., 198 
Ricardo, D., 181, 228-230, 253, 348 
Ritchie, D. G., 363 
Robertson, G. Croom, 56, 255-256, 

364 
Robertson, W., 167, 203 
Robynson, Ralph, 69 
Romanes, G. J., 361 
Romilly, Sir S., 209 
Ross, A., 323 

Rousseau, J. J., 167, 180, 223, 226 
Rust, George, 74, 328 



Salisbury, Earl of, 16 
Salisbury, John of, 1 
Sanderson, John, 8, 314 
Sanderson, R., 44, 319 
Schelling, F. W., 237, 240, 346 
Schiller, F. C. S., 365 
Scott, R. F., 9 
Selden, John, 45, 318 
Sergeant, John, 125-126, 332 



Seth, James, 365 

Shaftesbury, first Earl of, 103 f. 

Shaftesbury, third Earl of, 104, 141, 

150, 156-158, 160 f., 184, 292, 336 
Sherlock, W., 126, 148, 334 
Sidgwick, H., 217, 271-274, 358 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 10 
Simcox, Edith, 360 
Smith, Adam, 121, 163, 167, 181, 

182-190, 199, 203, 229, 253; Moral 

Sentiments, 182, 184-185, 342; 

Wealth of Nations, 183-190 
Smith, John, 74, 77, 95-97, 325 
Smith, W. H., 350 
Sophia, Electress of Hanover, 144 
Sophia Charlotte, Queen of Prussia, 

144 
Spalding, W., 355 
Spedding, J., 18, 30 
Spencer, Herbert, 260-265, 266, 269, 

273, 279, 291 f., 351 
Spinoza, B., 153 f., 287, 291 
Stanley, T., 46, 324 
Stephen, Sir J. F., 252, 358 
Stephen, Sir L., 269, 360 
Steuart, Sir James, 185 f., 343 
Stewart, Dugald, 158, 183, 202-204, 

247, 347 
Stillingfleet, Edward, 106 f., 124, 332 
Stirling, J. H., 235, 277-278, 356 
Stout, G. F., 365 
Strabo, 89 
Stubbe, Henry, 325 
Sully, James, 359 



Taylor, Isaac, 349 

Taylor, Jeremy, 44 f., 121, 325 

Taylor, T. (1758-1835), 34^ 

Taylor, Thomas, 334 

Temple, William, 8-12, 313 

Tenison, T., 73, 327 

Tennyson, Lord, 245 

Thomson, W., 238, 351 

Thornton, W. T., 253, 352 

Tillotson, J., 143, 147 

Tindal, Matthew, 141, 148-149, 150, 

160, 331 
Tonnies, F., 50, 56 
Toland, John, 106, 142-147, 150, 

153, 332 
Townsend, J., 227 
Tracy, A. Destutt, Comte de, 205, 

236 
Tucker, A., 192 f., 225, 343 
Tulloch, J., 95, 98, 355 
Turgot, A. R. J., 153 
Tyrrell, J., 328 



372 



Index 



Vane, Sir Walter, 104 
Veitch, John, 358 
Venn, John, 357 
Voltaire, 150 

W 



Wallace, A. R., 228, 270 
Wallace, R., 227 
Wallace, W., 281, 359 
Wallis, John, 55, 56, 97, 322 
Walpole, A., 36 
Walpole, Sir R., 133 
Warburton, W., 151 f., 339 
Ward, James, 287, 364 
Ward, Seth, 55 f-, 324 



Ward, W. G., 258, 363 
Watt, R., 126 
Whately, R., 246, 348 
Whewell, W., 247, 351 
Whichcote, B., 74-76, 97, 157, 333 
Whiston, W., 150, 332 
Whitaker, W., 9 
White, Thomas, 99, 323 
Whitehall, J., 328 
Whitgift, J., 9 
Wilkins, J., 74, 326 
Wilson, Thomas, 14, 313 
Wollaston, W., 148, 155, 337 
Woolston, Thomas, 141, 334 
Wordsworth, W., 245 
Worthington, J., 74, 324 
Wren, Matthew, 325 
Wyclif , John, 7 
Wynne, John, 106, 332 



Jl Selection from the 
Catalogue of 

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Moral Values 
and the Idea of God 

The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University 
of Aberdeen in 1914 and 1915 

By 

W. R. Sorley, Litt.D., LL.D. 

Fellow of the British Academy; Knightbridge Professor of Moral 
Philosophy; Fellow of King's College, Cambridge 

This work is concerned with the relation 
between the topics "the true foundations of all 
ethics and morals" and "the true knowledge 
of God." 

We must ask, What is the justification for 
using ethical ideas, or other ideas of value, in 
philosophical construction ? In what way, if at 
all, can they be used legitimately? And what 
effect have they upon our final view of the 
world? It is to a systematic investigation of 
these questions that the author addresses himself. 

The book is an amplification of lectures given 
at the University of Aberdeen under the Gifford 
Lectureship, 1914-1915. 

New York G. P. Putnam's Sons London 



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